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## [1] "NORTHEAST ARCHIVES OF FOLKLORE AND ORAL HISTORY IN PARTNERSHIP\n WITH MAINE FOLKLIFE CENTER\n\n\n AN INTERVIEW WITH EDWIN LAWSON FOR THE “LIFE OF THE MAINE\n LOBSTERMAN” PROJECT\n\n\n INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY RITA SWIDROWSKI\n\n\n WEST TREMONT, MAINE OCTOBER 13, 1972\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT BY RITA SWIDROWSKI\n\n\n EDITED BY DELPHINE DEMAISY\n, Interviewee Name: Edwin Lawson\n\nProject/Collection Title: Life of the Maine Lobsterman\n\nInterviewer(s) Name(s) and Affiliation: Rita Swidrowski – Maine Folklife Center\n\nInterview Location: West Tremont, ME\n\nDate of Interview: 10-13-1972\n\nInterview Description: Mr. Edwin Lawson at 73 years old, is an active and successful lobster\nfisherman. It is an occupation that he has been steadily working at for 49 years. For about 35\nyears, until 15 years ago, he also dragged scallops every winter on his own boat. Lawson talks\nabout his family and the importance that fishing has had in his life. He talks about his younger\ndays when he went to school and occupied other positions before truly becoming a lobsterman.\nHe talks about his buoys, their colors, materials, and how his sons reuse them.\n\nKey Words: lobsters, scallops, boats, gear, fishermen, family, weiring, dragging, buoys, territory,\nmaterials, traps, buoys.\n\nCollection Description: The bulk of the nineteen accessions (33 hours) in this collection consists\nof interviews by David Taylor conducted during the summer of 1974 focused on Maine lobster\nfishermen. Series NA0726, NA0727, and NA0747 - NA0750, and NA0777 have been added to\nthe collection since they are on the same topic and were done around the same time. Included in\nthe \"supplemental material\" is the contents of the MF037 collection folder: correspondence,\nclippings, articles, and surveys relating to the Life of the Maine Lobsterman Project. Transcripts\nby the Mapping Oceans Stories Project.\n\nCitation: Lawson, Edwin, Maine Folklife Center 1972 Oral History Interview, October 13, 1972,\nby Rita Swidrowski, 20 pages, Maine Folklife Center. Online: Insert URL (Last Accessed: Insert\nDate). Transcribed By: Rita Swidrowski. Edited By: Delphine Demaisy\n\nRS: Rita Swidrowski\n\nEL: Edwin Lawson\n, START OF 10131972-Lawson-Edwin-Interview-WestTremont-MFC\n\n[Start of Audio Part 1] & [Start of Tape 726.1]\n\n[00:00:52.0]\n\nRita Swidrowski: The following is an interview between Rita Swidroswki and Edwin Lawson in\nhis home in West Tremont, Maine. The date is October 13, 1972.\n\nRS: Okay, I will start by asking you where you were born.\n\nEdwin Lawson: Well, I was born right here in Tremont, on Seal Cove, that's up the line here\nabout a couple three miles.\n\nRS: How long did you live around here?\n\n EL: Oh, [here the tape recorder failed to work on battery. The tape resumes again after I plug it\nin and use it on AC.]\n\nRS: It was the battery.\n\nEL: It was the battery?\n\nRS: It was the battery. So, your father was a sardine fisherman?\n\nEL: He fished weirs, build them off from the shores; fish go into them, and they have lines to\npull them up to get them to go into the boats.\n\nRS: And what did his father do, was he a fisherman too?\n\n[00:02:20.0]\n\nEL: No, his father come from England, he was a farmer mostly. He was shipwrecked down in\nShip Harbor and that's how he happened to settle here, he and his brother.\n\nRS: How old were you when you started lobster fishing?\n\nEL: Well, I'm seventy-three now and I've been going for forty-nine years this time steady. And of\ncourse, I went quite a number of the years before that, I didn’t really make a business of it. I had\ntrips out when I was twelve years old.\n\nRS: Who did you go with when you were twelve years old?\n, EL: Who did I go with? Alone, just myself.\n\nRS: How?\n\nEL: Just a small rowboat, I only had fifteen traps.\n\nRS: Did you sell your lobster at that time?\n\nEL: We used to sell them at twenty-five cents a piece. I did sell them, I guess some of them. The\nregular fishermen sold them to the pound but they used to buy off us boys; three, four, just for a\nfew traps, bought ours twenty-five cents a piece.\n\nRS: Who bought them from you?\n\nEL: There used to be a boat come around they call a lobster smack, come from Rockland.\n\nRS: Where?\n\nEL: A small vessel, with the well in it too, keep them alive too you know, tight tank.\n\nRS: Were the smacks owned by one person in Rockland?\n\n[00:04:13.0]\n\nEL: No, they was owned by the lobster companies the people that owned, the buyers, A.C.\nMcLewn was in one. [They] used to come to Swan’s Island from Rockland and they come from\nall [over]; from West, Boston, Gloucester, but most of them down this way, the buyers was in\nRockland.\n\nRS: I see, when did the smacks stop coming? They don’t have them anymore?\n\nEL: No, no it's been quite a few years since the smack were on. I don’t know, well they might in\nsome places, you know, around the islands, but on the mainland, they don’t really, [they] mostly\ngo by truck. They run them through to Boston or New York, wherever they’re from.\n\nRS: Yeah, were there more lobsters at the time you started than now would you say?\n\nEL: Well, I don’t know, I don’t believe there’s too much difference. Mostly there wasn’t near as\nmany fishermen then as there is now. There was no small outboards, no kids going, or part time.\nNow people that's got a good job, just as soon as they get through work, they go lobstering in the\nafternoon. They never used to think of it then, it's only been the last twenty years I’d say that\nthey’ve – of course there wasn’t any outboards. I had the first outboard around here anywhere; a\nlittle two and a half horsepower, I got at Sears Roebucks.\n, [00:06:12.0]\n\nRS: How old were you then when you had that?\n\nEL: Oh, I was about seventeen.\n\nRS: How many traps did you have at that time when you were seventeen?\n\nEL: Well, I probably had – I was working with my father around weirs and I take up time. I had\nperhaps thirty-five, forty.\n\nRS: So that was on Swan's Island?\n\nEL: No, that year that was Swan's Island and we had weirs on Swan's Island, we had weirs on\nBlack Island and we had weirs down here at Mitchell's Cove and we had weirs at Placentia.\n\nRS: Now, weirs are the nets actually?\n\nEL: Well, the stakes drove them in the ground really and the net's around them. And then they\ntake a seine and go inside and seine the fish out, and get them up so they can take them out. And\nthen there is some of them has twine that's hung right in the stakes and, they pull them up and\ntake the fish out that way, in small boats and the [unknown], we used to. But now, they take them\nup and bail the fish right into a sardine boat, big boat. But, there's no weirs, there’s no weirs now,\nthe sardine business is all down-hill as far as weirs go, some seiners – but the last few years that's\nbeen pretty well shot.\n\n[00:07:58.0]\n\nRS: Did you make your own traps when you first started?\n\nEL: No, I used to go around, pick up second hand ones from my brother or people that\ncondemned them, just patch them up, mostly.\n\nRS: How much would you pay for a trap at that time?\n\nEL: At that time? Oh, I wouldn't know, I never really built many new ones when I was that age.\nNot very much, at that time, you couldn't buy traps, You could buy laths but you couldn't buy the\nrest of it, not until later. Now you can buy the bottoms, the frames, and the laths and the boughs.\nAs today would cost about the material to build one, before you start in on it, cost around four\ndollars.\n\nRS: You said you had gotten them from your brothers, did other people in your family go into\nlobster fishing too?\n\nEL: Well, they did off and on.\n, RS: Who else?\n\nEL: Oh, my oldest brother.\n\n[ Next 20 seconds is a break from the interview because Mrs. Lawson's cat was inquisitively\nlooking at the tape recorder. We laugh. Mrs. Lawson comments that he wants to see what's going\non and I wait.]\n\nRS: So, who else, your older brother?\n\n[00:09:45.0]\n\nEL: Yes, my oldest brother, my other brother next to me, in between, used to go lobstering off\nand on. He never made a regular business of it; go fishing in the summer and drag scallops in the\nwinter.\n\nRS: Who was the person who first taught you about lobster fishing?\n\nEL: Oh, I don't know, I used to go with my brother when I was a kid; I suppose that's where I got\nit from. There's not much to it, just go and set traps, anybody can do that. When you get a lot of\ntraps and make a business of it, that's a different thing, just like everything else.\n\nRS: Do you remember any difficulties at first when you were young, that you had with it?\n\nEL: No, I don't.\n\nRS: What would you say is the first thing that you remember about lobster fishing, an experience\nor something like that?\n\nEL: Well, I don't know, I used to like to go, but I didn't really go for a living, I just went to pick\nup a little money and to spend, same as kids will.\n\nRS: What did you like about it besides the money?\n\nEL: Well, I don't know, it was quite interesting. It always quite interested me anyhow before I\never got into it, to make a living out of it. Years ago, seventy-five to a hundred traps was a big\nstring of traps and now, the big fisherman, they run up to a thousand traps. Probably\nfive-hundred, six-hundred’s just an average string. I used to run about five hundred or better,\nnow I’m getting older, I only run about four-hundred.\n\n[00:12:03.0]\n\nRS: Is that how many you have in the water?\n, EL: Yeah, I have about four hundred; I haul a couple hundred each day.\n\nRS: What is the average that fishermen have around this area, would you say?\n\nEL: What, number of traps? Oh, I should say about, anywhere from two hundred to seven\nhundred, I guess something like that, according to the boat. Some of them have a man with them,\nI always went alone. When the boys were small, they used to go with me and help me, but I've\nbeen alone for just as soon as they got big enough, they wanted a boat and now they can either\ncatch more lobsters than I can.\n\nRS: So you have two sons that fish now?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\nRS: Where do they do it, around here too?\n\nEL: No, one of them, goes back; he goes out of this cove and the other one goes out in Bass\nHarbor\n\nRS: So your territory is near your sons’ territory, right down here?\n\n[00:13:27.0]\n\nEL: Yeah, well, we all fish in the same areas really. My oldest son fishes outside [Meaning\noutside Blue Hill Bay] I don't fish outside; I fish Blue Hill Bay out here, I only go about seven\nmonths a year. After [the] first of December well, it ain't worth while fishing here in this bay;\nthey have to go outside. I used to take my traps up and go scalloping, drag scallops. I went\nscalloping about thirty-five winters, all together. I had a different boat, a little bigger boat, and I\ngive that up, fifteen years ago I guess.\n\nRS: How do you scallop, is that completely different?\n\nEL: How do we drag them? Well, they have a big – it's an iron frame with a net in it, they drag\nalong the bottom. They have a wire, a long wire, for the hoister. It runs for the – well some [are]\nhydraulic and some of them runs right off the engine clutch to hoist them up then. They're quite\nheavy, they're all iron frame. Some of them drag two; one on each side, the big boats.\n\nRS: Is it as profitable as lobster fishing?\n\nEL: Well, it is now. Of course, they have a closed season on it; the fifteenth, I think it's the\nfifteenth of April until the first of November it's closed, you can't drag.\n\n[00:15:30.0]\n\nRS: When you first started, what kind of traps did you use?\n, EL: Oh, we used softwood traps then, now everything's hardwood. Your soft wood trap didn't\nlast more than two years, then worms get into them, the sea worms. And with the hardwood\nlaths, they don't get into the hardwood laths. Well only in certain places that they'll get into them,\nbut that's the only thing. We don't have much trouble with worms with hardwood traps, not\nunless they happen to be left out all winter, but summer, you haul them up and they’d be all\nworm-eaten, all gone. Some of them kill them, they soak them in some kind of a – I don’t know\nwhat it is, Cuprinol I guess; it's preservative and it helps.\n\nRS: I see, how about metal traps? I heard that with metal traps, you do not have trouble with the\nworms, have you ever tried those?\n\nEL: Well yes I had one, I didn't think much of it. I had it for – somebody gave it to me for\nsamples. I don't know, I didn't catch much of it, they don't use them much here. We’d go out, the\nbig boats that fish offshore, I guess, they use them all together; yeah, the big draggers, the\noff-shore draggers, lobster catcher. Wooden traps wouldn’t last long, the way they have to handle\nthem.\n\n[00:17:32.0]\n\nRS: What style trap do you like, the two heads or one head?\n\nEL: I use a bow trap with, sometimes a spider with three heads and two side heads, two end\nheads, dummy heads they call them. And then I use some with just one head and a fishing head\nin one end, I can't see any difference.\n\nRS: What are the dummy heads?\n\nEL: Just, to liven up the ends of the traps they put a net over it, just knitted.\n\nRS: Do you make your own traps now or any of them?\n\nEL: Yeah, I make all my traps and knit all my heads.\n\nRS: How long does it take you, would you say?\n\nEL: Oh, I build anywhere from fifty to a hundred a winter now, you know, I don't work steady at\nit, I'm all done, well, before spring I have them all headed up.\n\nRS: Do you lose many traps a year?\n\nEL: Yes, what I lose and condemn that gets old, about fifty a year, I figure. I build fifty a winter\nand just about keeps me stringing up.\n\nRS: What are the heads, what do you use, the nylon twine?\n\nEL: Nylon, yeah; polyethylene.\n, RS: What did they use to use before nylon?\n\n[00:19:12.0]\n\nEL: Well, they used to use just cotton; cotton heading and then they used what they call manilla.\nThey were heavier, that was better than cotton. With cotton, you had to head your traps up every\nyear, but now, with nylon, they wear a trap out. The traps will be gone sometimes before the\nheads are so, you save a lot of money. It costs a lot more, the heads do, but in the long run it's\ncheaper.\n\nRS: Where do you get your materials?\n\nEL: From a lobster dealer, he gets it. You order it from him and he gets it from the mill where\nthey saw out the laths and trap stuff, that’s a big business now.\n\nRS: Is that here on the island?\n\nEL: Oh yeah, there's a number of them.\n\nRS: So what kind of wood is it now?\n\nEL: Oak, you can get spruce, but mostly oak.\n\nRS: I see, how far is your territory? How far do you go a day, would you say?\n\nEL: I go up both sides of Blue Hill Bay from Bass Harbor, up as far as Hardwood Island and\nacross the bay and down on the other side, part way down; not clear down, but part way down.\n\nRS: How do you pull up your traps?\n\n[00:21:04.0]\n\nEL: You have a hydraulic hoister. It's a – it runs off the engine, the big pump runs off the engine\nand the hydraulic motor. You know, the two big discs that's – well they're shaped like that [makes\ngesture with hands which I can’t exactly remember] and the rope goes right in between them and\npinches them. And it will haul in them a little thing they call a knife that goes under between the\ndiscs that cut that rope out. It don't cut it, it just disengaged it so it will drop down, so it won’t\nwind clear up around. That’s how I lost the end of that finger; I got it under the rope, it took it\nright off, just like a knife.\n\nRS: When was that?\n\nEL: Oh, about two years ago.\n, RS: Do most of the boats now have those?\n\nEL: Yes, practically all of them.\n\nRS: How heavy are the traps when you pull them out, are they waterlogged?\n\nEL: Well, of course you're cement in them or rocks, you know, the ballast. Oh, I imagine,\nseventy-five pounds, probably. Some of them ballast heavier than others; I don't ballast mine too\nheavy, I think probably when they're soaked, some of them weigh a hundred pounds, fifty,\nseventy-five pounds.\n\nRS: What is a good fair catch for a day, how many lobsters or pounds?\n\nEL: Well, according to how many traps you're running.\n\nRS: Say for you.\n\n[00:22:57.0]\n\nEL: Well, a hundred-fifty pounds is a good haul for me. Some of these outside boats, when the\nlobsters are running good, they take up [to] four, five hundred pounds, especially double boats.\nBut there's no lobsters outside at times, whereas here in the bay, we get steadier fishing than they\ndo outside, but they don't catch many lobsters really, as they do on the outside.\n\nRS: What's the best time of year for the biggest haul?\n\nEL: Oh, from September through October, November, right here in the bay. That’s after they\nshed, no shell on them, they start crawling. Through the summer there ain't too much, they're\nunder the rocks, shedding.\n\nRS: In the summer?\n\nEL: In the summer, yeah.\n\nRS: You think they are livelier than in the fall?\n\nEL: Well, they crawl more in the fall, coming up from under the rocks and going off, I suppose\nthey’re hungry. They’ve been in under the rocks shedding and getting new shells. You can do\nbetter to let those traps, run enough traps so you can let them set over, so that you haul them\nevery other day. What I haul today, I won’t haul until day after tomorrow; I’ll haul the other half\ntomorrow, and sometimes three days is better.\n\n[00:24:54.0]\n, RS: Can they crawl in and then crawl out again, after you set them?\n\nEL: No, they can but not too much now, the way the head in the traps are made. If they set long\nenough, some of them might get out but the bigger ones will stay trapped; they stay trapped until\nyou haul the traps. Sometimes in the spring, you get lobsters out of it that've been there all\nwinter.\n\nRS: Oh, really! Are they pretty active in the winter, during the day?\n\nEL: No, no there's nothing here in the bay in the winter, they leave the bay altogether. I don't\nknow where they go; whether they go outside or whether they just crawl and hide. [inaudible]\nBut outside they fish all winter but they can’t make it pay [the] last few years. There used to be\npretty good fishing out there in the winter, but now, most everybody goes shrimping now.\n\nRS: Why do they leave, is it the temperature of the water?\n\nEL: I don't know why it is, but we got deeper water here in the bay then they have outside until\nthey get way off[shore]. We have places here in the bay where there's fifty fathoms, three\nhundred feet.\n\nRS: How many men fish in Blue Hill?\n\nEL: Oh I wouldn't know, they fish from all up down Blue Hill and Swan's Island and they fish in\nthe bay, right at the bay. Some of them fish outside, of course, but most of the people live inside\nthe bay. They practically all fish in the bay, not too many go outside. But the Bass Harbor boats,\nlike that in Southwest Harbor, they fish outside altogether, practically altogether.\n\n[00:27:05.0]\n\nRS: So they are out in the open ocean?\n\nEL: Yeah, they're out in the ocean.\n\nRS: How do they get along here with each other in the bay?\n\nEL: Oh, pretty good. There's some feuding but there’s not too much. [laughter] Oh, I never heard\nof every once in a while they have a spell somebody will – they think somebody’s doing\nsomething to them, they’ll cut their gear, but not too much. Since I’ve been going, I've never had\nany trouble, not too much. What trouble we have in the bay is we can’t fish Sundays and that\nleaves Sunday for the – well a lot of the summer people do it, you know, campers like that.\nThey’ve got the outboards and they’ll haul your traps.\n\nRS: Oh, really? What would you do if you knew who was doing it?\n, EL: Well if the warden catches them – it’s quite hard to catch them, these outboards now, some\nof them go forty miles an hour and [laughs a little] they couldn't catch them if they wanted to,\nbut they don't try to catch them. We've only got one warden here in this whole area.\n\nRS: In the whole bay?\n\n[00:28:30.0]\n\nEL: In this whole bay and all along this coast here for part of the coast and Southwest Harbor to\nSwan's Island, I think there's only one warden. There's one up in the bay, one up in Blue Hill;\nthat's one of our main troubles. We ought to have more wardens, with a trap, you don't have\nmuch protection. When you leave a trap [unknown] across the bay, around them islands, there's\nnobody [who] lives over there and these outboards, or anybody, can haul them if they want to.\nBut we don't have much trouble amongst the fishermen, natives, like that so much as it is the\noutsiders, especially in the summer. This time of year, we don't have much trouble, that’s why I\nsay they ought to have a higher license cost; say a hundred dollars instead of ten. You can get a\nlobster license, now anybody can for ten dollars; kids, anybody. They ought to have it, if it was a\nhundred dollars, they could hire more wardens, they could put more wardens. And it would keep\na lot of this part-time fishermen and kids out of it. That's one of our troubles here in the bay is\npart-time fishermen and the kids, all the kids, you know, going.\n\n[00:30:12.0]\n\nRS: How do…\n\nEL: They say they don't, they don't make much difference with their lobstering because they only\nrun a few traps, but you take fifteen or twenty with a few traps and that's a lot.\n\nRS: Gee, well how do you establish your territory? And how do you say the kids go around?\n\nEL: They all mix now.\n\nRS: Oh, they do?\n\nEL: Years ago it was more everybody had their own territory, so many boats, but people didn’t\ncome into it. But now they – a stranger can come right in and fish right with you and think\nnothing about it. I guess in places they don't dare to, but I know here in Blue Hill Bay, there's – I\nguess anybody can fish it that wants to, as far as I know, there's nobody [that] bothers them. They\ndo a lot of talking but then, [laughter] they don't do nothing.\n\nRS: They get pretty mad then?\n\nEL: I guess out the west on the other side [of] the bay I guess they don't mix in with that crowd\ntoo much.\n, RS: Where is that?\n\nEL: Around Swan's Island, Stonington, over that way; they don't talk to strangers too good.\n\nRS: Just in general people know they should not go on in there. Are people fishing in your area,\nin general?\n\nEL: Oh yeah, they fish right here; they fishermen, one or two every year fishes right along with\nus. It's just, if they fish a few days [unknown], just one of us, nobody bothers them.\n\n[00:32:04.0]\n\nRS: What colors are your buoys?\n\nEL: Mine's orange and white.\n\nRS: Is there any reason why you picked those colors?\n\nEL: No, you've got to pick a color that's – there's so many colors, you got to pick a color that's\neasy to see; orange, and, white is a good color. Orange, especially on the water, is one of the best\ncolors. There's more orange on buoys now than any other color, they've got them mixed in with\nred and green and marked up different.\n\nRS: Is it bright orange?\n\nEL: Yes, fluorescent orange.\n\nRS: Yeah, you use wooden buoys?\n\nEL: No, I use plastic altogether, foam.\n\nRS: The styrofoam?\n\nEL: Uh, uh.\n\nRS: When did you switch, did you switch over recently?\n\nEL: No, well I’ve been doing it gradually for [the] last ten years.\n\nRS: Are they better?\n\nEL: Well yes, they're really better because they don't soak up. Take a wooden buoy after they've\nbeen out for three or four months, they get heavy, whereas the plastic buoys; they never get\nheavy. They've all just the same, you can take them in one day and paint them the next whereas a\n, wooden buoy, you've got to dry them out for months sometimes before you can.\n\nRS: Did you use to make your own buoys too?\n\nEL: I used to.\n\nRS: What kind of wood did you use?\n\nEL: Cedar, they all – cedar's the best; lighter, they won’t soak like spruce.\n\n[00:33:55.0]\n\nRS: How long is your line? Can you describe the buoy and the traps are set up?\n\nEL: Well according to where you fish, if you’re fishing on the shore, well I use fifteen fathom\nand then you go off a ways and you got to use thirty fathom, twenty fathom, thirty fathom to\nforty-five fathom here in the bay. Right now, after this time of year, the lobsters are moving off\nfrom shore; I use thirties, and forty-five fathom altogether, practically altogether, some fifteens.\n\nRS: Is it called a pot warp?\n\nEL: Yeah, that's nylon, dacron.\n\nRS: How thick is it?\n\nEL: Five-sixteenths of an inch, most of it, some of them use heavier, most of its five-sixteenths.\n\nRS: Now there are two buoys?\n\nEL: No, we use one big buoy on top and then about halfway down, part way down, we use what\nwe call a toggle. It's just a small one that keeps the warp up from dragging on the bottom,\ncatching on the rocks, and it helps the buoy float better when the tides running.\n\nRS: And what is that made of?\n\nEL: That’s same; foam, styrofoam, plastic.\n\nRS: Is it the exact same as a buoy?\n\nEL: No, its small, smaller than a buoy, and that's underwater most of the time.\n\n[00:35:53.0]\n\nRS: When you first started lobstering, did you have a license then?\n, EL: No, I didn't have a license then; you didn't have [to], you had to have your name on the buoy,\nthat's all. You didn't have to have a license, I think sometime about 1920, 1923 I think is when\nthey started having numbers, I'm not sure.\n\nRS: Numbers on the buoys?\n\nEL: Yeah, you had to have a license and a number.\n\nRS: How did the fishermen react to the fact that they had to get a license?\n\nEL: Oh I guess they didn’t say much about it, I guess they took it as it come.\n\nRS: Did you think it was a good idea, then, at the time?\n\nEL: Well, I don’t know, I don't hardly remember much about that, probably there was a lot of\nkicking about it.\n\nRS: Yeah, what kind of boat did you use?\n\nEL: Oh, I’ve had three boats; I had one small boat, once about twenty-two feet, and then I had\nanother one and she was thirty-one, and this one I got now is twenty. I had this one built, this one\nis twenty-eight feet. When I was seventeen, eighteen years old, you could have a boat built for\nten dollars a foot, and eleven years ago, I had this one built, it was a hundred dollars a foot. And\nI imagine now it’ll be probably a hundred and fifty dollars a foot, I don’t know.\n\n[00:38:10.0]\n\nRS: The boat you had when you were seventeen, did it have a motor or not?\n\nEL: When I was that age, I think I had about twenty-two, twenty-three foot; a single cylinder\nmotor. That's all they used to use many years ago; single-cylinder, and then they started running\nthe four-cylinder engines. Now almost everybody has got either a four or six or an eight and,\nwell there’s a lot of them got bigger boats and about all got diesel engines now. About a hundred,\na hundred and fifty horsepower diesels. They run a lot cheaper. It costs me about six dollars a\nday to run. I got a gasoline engine, a hundred and thirty-five horsepower. And my son’s got an\neighty-horse diesel and he can run seven days for twelve dollars, that’s quite a saving. Of course,\nthe diesel costs more to start with, and the overhaul was more, but if anybody’s going to make a\nbusiness of it, well a diesel’s the coming thing now. I don't like them, I’d rather pay a little more\nfor gasoline. Gasoline engines’ much quieter, and less vibration; the diesel's got a lot of vibration\nand they’re awful noisy. Of course, they’re quite smelly too but, you know, smell like kerosene,\nbut I don't mind that part. I can’t stand that vibration, the high compression and they seem to be\nrattling all the time.\n\n[00:40:09.0]\n, RS: What color is your boat?\n\nEL: It's white and the – well it's kind of a brown trim on deck and on the house.\n\nRS: And, how many years have you had it?\n\nEL: This one, this new one, eleven years.\n\nRS: Eleven years, do you have to display your colors on the boat?\n\nEL: Yeah, we have to have our colors on top of the house so they can see them.\n\nRS: Are there any accidents that you've heard of around here?\n\n EL: Well, yes there's a boat [that] burned up, just up the bay here, about last week. Fiberglass\nboat, they're using a lot of fiberglass boats now.\n\nRS: What happened?\n\nEL: He backed – I think it backfired and he was right near the shore and he beached her and she\nburned right up. And he got out, and he wasn't hurt. That was a nine, ten thousand dollar boat.\n\nRS: Oh, are there any drownings that you have heard of?\n\n[00:41:48.0]\n\nEL: Well, there was one here this summer; part-time fisherman, he was camping down to one of\nthe islands, down Blue Hill, Black Island and he was out in a small boat. I guess the outboard\nstopped and it was rough, and he went back to clear something out of the wheel, she filled over\nthe stern, she was a small boat with a big motor on her. Well, he had to, there was a woman with\nhim and she swim ashore. She held him up as long as she could, he couldn't swim, I guess. And\nthey got his – they found him the next day, and he was a contractor here, one of the contractors.\nHe had all kinds of machinery too you know, road work, like that.\n\nRS: Do you know how to swim?\n\nEL: Well, I don’t know, I used to [laughing]. It’s been a long while, I could swim some but I was\nnever too much at it.\n\nRS: Would you say most fishermen know how?\n\nEL: Well, it’s a good – I’ll bet half of them can’t swim. It was pretty hard to swim, if you’d go\noverboard with your oil clothes on and boots too, to get them off to swim.\n, RS: What do you wear on a day when you go out?\n\nEL: What do you mean, oil clothes? I put on my oil clothes when I get aboard the boat, of\ncourse, and I wear boots and high boots, and just the clothes, just the same as I got on now. This\ntime of year, I put on a heavy shirt under my oil clothes.\n\nRS: What are oil clothes?\n\n[00:44:04.0]\n\nEL: That’s just like rain clothes, you know. I don’t know what they call them; neoprene I guess, I\nthink they’re made in Norway. There’s pants, [they] come up and strap to your shoulder and then\nthere’s a coat, they’re waterproof. Some kind of fabric, I don't know what it is, its nylon. [With]\nsome kind of coating over it, I think. Years ago, there they used to have [them], it was made out\nof cotton and oiled. They put something in the oil so the oil stayed on the outside of them, made\na coating, but they wasn't near as good as they are now.\n\nRS: Would they make them themselves?\n\nEL: No, no, you could buy a whole suit for about, well I can’t remember when they was a dollar\na piece, two dollars, now we have to pay twenty dollars a suit.\n\nRS: Where do you get them now?\n\nEL: At the dealers, that’s where we sell lobsters, they have all that stuff.\n\nRS: How long do they last?\n\nEL: Oh, they last about a season, pretty near a season, if you don’t happen to have a hard luck\nand tear them.\n\nRS: What, and then they wear off after?\n\nEL: Yeah, yes, the stuff wears off [of] them. I say they’ll go for around six months maybe,\nsometimes not so much.\n\n[00:45:58.0]\n\nRS: How about the boots? How long do they last?\n\nEL: Oh, I can get about a year out of a pair.\n\nRS: When you were about seventeen, what did you use to wear then, when you would go out\nfishing?\n, EL: Oh, I don't know, probably just about the same; boots and oil clothes.\n\nRS: You have done other jobs besides lobstering?\n\nEL: Yes, I've worked in the spring, in the fall I used to work up in a summer place up shore here\na ways, I worked up there for about seventeen and eighteen years off and on. In between the\nlobster and scallop season when there wasn't much doing. Then, I was down South one winter on\na yacht.\n\nRS: When was that?\n\nEL: 1919\n\nRS: What did you do on the yacht?\n\nEL: I was lance man, I run the lance, the help lance. They used to take the crew ashore on their\nleave and get groceries and like that. Then there was a couple of years I was chauffeur, between\nMans, over here to Manset. And Worcester, Massachusetts, and Pasadena, California, that’s\nwhere the cottage was, in California, all around the southern part of California.\n\nRS: When was that? When did you go to California?\n\nEL: About 1922 I guess, somewhere around 1922, 1923.\n\n[00:48:10.0]\n\nRS: So, after you did the other work you came back to lobstering?\n\nEL: Yes, since I was married, that's all I've done, lobstered and scalloped.\n\nRS: Do you like it more than the other jobs?\n\nEL: Yes I like it, of course, I can't do same as I used to, I used to go from daylight to dark. I can't\ndo it now; I leave here before daylight, and after two, three o'clock I've [laughing] had enough.\n\nRS: Did you ever want to do anything else for a living when you were younger?\n\nEL: Well, I thought I did when I was younger, I went to a YMCA automobile school in Boston\none winter, and I went to commercial college two winters in Rockland, but I found out that I\n[laughs] wasn't cut out for [it], I guess I wasn't smart enough. [RS: laughs lightly] Oh I was\nalright on the automobile business, I got my diploma in nine weeks, in automobile school. I liked\nthat but, I guess, went to commercial college to pass the time away anyhow, I guess.\n\n[00:49:35.0]\n, RS: Do you have any special time in your life that you really enjoyed lobstering, any best years?\n\nEL: Oh, when I first started in, It wasn't – we had it pretty well to ourselves. Here two or three\n[fishermen] in the bay and you could fish where you wanted to and nobody would bother you.\nThey wouldn't chase you around, you know, same as they do now. I’ve been so long that they\n[younger fishermen] think I know the bottom a lot of them, same as an old hand will and well,\n[they will] kind of follow you along. But, it wouldn’t work if you – when I started in, if you done\nthat, well you were liable to lose traps but, nowadays they don’t.\n\nRS: If you followed other people?\n\nEL: Yeah [laughter] if you mixed in with some of these, of the fellows you do, they didn’t think\nmuch of it. They’d cut you off, but now they don’t think anything of it, they must mix in with\neverybody.\n\nRS: When you were twenty, what did most other young men around here do for a living?\n\nEL: Well, in the summer, a lot of them used to go yachting. There used to be a lot of yachting\njobs in the summer and then there was a lot of work over here on the park. At that time,\nRockefeller had a big job; he employed a lot of men. And different jobs, there wasn’t too many\nwho went lobstering, not when I started in.\n\nRS: Why do you think you did?\n\nEL: Oh I guess just because I was always on the water, I thought it was an easy life.\n\nRS: Is it a good feeling being out on the water?\n\nEL: Oh yes, in the summer I see the sun come up from across the bay about every morning, and I\nplan on leaving here before daylight, every morning. Now it's getting bad weather, well days are\nshorter and we don't leave so early.\n\n[00:52:15.0] [End of Audio Part 1]\n\n[Start of Audio Part 2] [00:00:19.0]\n\nRS: Does it ever get lonely out there when you are in the boat?\n\nEL: No, [laughing] I don't get lonely in the boat. [laughter]\n\nRS: Do the summer people ever really get in the way now?\n\nEL: No, no they don’t bother much. Like I say, on the weekends, that’s when we have a lot of\ntraps bothered and of course we’d lay to the summer people, like that, but of course there’s a lot\nof natives that will do it, you know, on picnics. They don't make a business of it, sometimes,\n, some weekends, they don't bother, but you never know when they're going to.\n\nRS: Has anybody ever cut off your traps?\n\nEL: Yes, I've had traps cut off, sometimes you mistrust [meaning \"suspect\"] who's doing it, and\nother times it's pretty hard to tell. I never accused anybody but, lots of times in my own mind,\n[laughter] I know who did.\n\nRS: Do you think most of the men are pretty honest?\n\nEL: I think so, yeah they never – that is around here that I fish with a good bunch, can’t\ncomplain.\n\nRS: What did you use to do around here when you were not fishing for fun?\n\n[00:02:11.0]\n\nEL: Oh I don’t – I’ve always been fishing since I’ve been around here [laughs], and outside\nworking ashore in the spring, fall, I used to lobster until [the] first of November. Then, I went\nscalloping until the season ended and then by that time, I got my boat painted up, it was time to\ngo lobstering again, I just kept going right around. Now I don’t go scalloping [mumble]. About\nall I do in the winter is lobster [in] December. Just build traps and perhaps paint my house a little\nbit or something like that, I don’t work very hard.\n\nRS: Well, how about when you were younger, did you socialize with the other fishermen and go\nto dance or anything like that?\n\nEL: No, I never went to dance; I used to go out to dances but I never danced.\n\nRS: Did they get together around here, the lobstermen?\n\nEL: Oh, I guess they do, I don’t know, I don’t go out any.\n\nRS: So your father lived right up that road? [meaning going right from Mr. Lawson's house]\n\n[00:04:00.0]\n\nEL: No, my father lived right across this church up there in that yellow house across this side.\nBut, well when he was first married, that was my mother's home when I was born, up there in\nSeal Cove. This way, going to the right and then we moved down this same house now, but he\ndidn't own it then, I guess he just rented it. And then he owned a place down, farther down on the\npoint and then we went from there to Swan's Island and then he moved back off of there, I guess\nit was only about seven or eight years and then moved down to Bass Harbor. And then, from\nthere, he bought another place in Mitchell’s Cove. Then he come back up here in this house, here\nthis was the last house he owned up here by the church.\n, RS: The yellow house?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\nRS: How come he moved around?\n\nEL: Oh, I don't know, he was just taking advantage of shore fronts and tab locations where he\nwas. See, he could make a little money one way and he shifted around. He used to make good\nmoney weiring but the last of it, the weiring was bad and he didn’t make much the last of it\ngoing.\n\nRS: How many kids were in your family?\n\nEL: Five.\n\nRS: And there are just two other brothers?\n\nEL: Two, two brothers and two sisters I had. My oldest brother and oldest sister died a few years\nago.\n\n[00:06:02.0]\n\nRS: Do you like it around here?\n\nEL: I like it here as well as anywhere, as long as my work is here, I wouldn’t like it here if I\nwasn’t working here. But it don't make any difference to me where I am, wherever I'm working. I\ngot quite a lot of land, I can run around on my own. I own pretty near over to that white house\nover there, over to this one, right down the shore, all this land in here, I bought it a few years\nago. We got a wharf down in here, there’s a creek up in there, we got a wharf there, that's where\nwe go from. I just put a new road in, that road right there that goes just down across from right\nthere you can see it, we put it last winter. [Pointing out the living room window which faces the\nshore. The road is across the street and to the right of the house.]\n\nRS: That goes down to the shore?\n\nEL: That goes right down to my wharf, my son and I put it in together.\n\nRS: Was it a big investment to build a wharf?\n\nEL: That road cost me eighteen hundred dollars. My son's building a new wharf down there, I’ve\ngot a wharf down there but he's building a new one right alongside of it.\n\nRS: That's where your boat is, right down there?\n, EL: No, we have to keep our boats off from the harbor. The tide runs out here so, drive in low at\nwater. That's the worst trouble with it, we have quite a long ways to row in the morning, [and]\nnight.\n\nRS: Oh I see, how far do you have to row?\n\nEL: Oh, it must be, I don't know, a quarter of a mile out there, I guess.\n\n[00:08:05.0]\n\nRS: What harbor is it now, Bass Harbor? [I was not thinking of cove and harbor as being\nsynonymous]\n\nEL: No, this is Goose Cove, this is West Tremont; the post office is West Tremont but this is\nGoose Cove. And there’s a cove up this way, Seal Cove and the one just below it is Duck Cove,\nand the one there is Bass Harbor. And then you go out around the point from Bass Harbor until\nyou’re in Southwest Harbor.\n\nRS: Oh, I see! I will have to look at a map of it; I know it by the roads, but not from the water. So\nyou just keep a rowboat down there?\n\n EL: Yeah, we have two or three rowboats down here, my grandson goes, he got a boat, he goes a\nlot.\n\nRS: How old is he?\n\nEL: He's about twenty, twenty-one, I guess.\n\nRS: So he fishes as a regular full-time thing?\n\nEL: Yeah, yes, he's got a boat, yeah. He was just married here, about a month ago.\n\nRS: Do you have a lot of grandchildren that are fishing now or other relatives?\n\n[00:09:16.0]\n\nEL: Yes, my other boy's got a son that's fishing. He's just come out, he's been in the Navy. That's\nthe only two I got down this way. I got one, lives in Lynn, he just puts out a few traps in the\nsummer, Marblehead, somewhere down that way, just to fool around with. When he comes down\nhere in the summer on his vacation he's got quite a big car, he takes some of my old traps that\nI've condemned and patches them up and takes them back up there [laughter] and fishes. I give\nhim old buoys and ropes so they don't cost him anything. In Massachusetts, where he goes, he\ncan run ten traps I think, for ten dollars a license. And the regular fishermen there have to pay a\nhundred dollars for a license and that's what it should be right here in Maine. And they ought to\nput a limit on the age limit, I think it ought to be sixteen years old anyhow before they can get a\n, license.\n\n[00:10:42.0]\n\nRS: Now would that be legal if he takes your buoys down there, with the colors?\n\nEL: Oh yeah, he has to paint them over you know, and as long as he's got his number on them,\nhis license number, that's all right. Mostly old wooden buoys that I don’t use, he takes them.\n\nRS: Did you teach your sons?\n\nEL: Well I suppose so, they went with me ever since they was that high, you couldn’t keep them\nashore. Just as soon as they got big enough to go for themselves with a boat they just left. A big\nhelp when they were going with me. When you do it all alone, it slows you down. A lot to it.\n\n[00:11:52.0] [End of Audio Part 2] & [End of Tape 726.1]\n\n[Start Audio Part 3] [00:00:33.0]\n\n\nRS: What would they do to help you?\n\nEL: Plug lobsters and bait pockets, like that.\n\nRS: What do you use for plugs?\n\nEL: For what?\n\nRS: What do you use for the plugs? Wooden?\n\nEL: Oh, I use wooden plugs. Some of them use elastic bands and some of them use plastic plugs.\nElastic bands are really the best, because they have the little, like a pair of scissors, that open the\nbands, they put them on over the claws and the lobster can't open his claw. The other way you've\ngot to stick that plug right down into where the joint in his claw. And after they do that, they car\nthem up, to hold them up.\n\n[Here the tape ran out. We continued to talk about lobster\nplugs for a while and then moves on to a more general conversation.]\n\n[00:01:54.0]\n\nEND OF 10131972-Lawson-Edwin-Interview-WestTremont-MFC\n, Reviewed by Delphine Demaisy 06/23/2023\n"
# convert text to character lines
lawson1 <- read_lines(lawson1_full_text)
lawson1 <- tibble(lawson1)
lawson1 <- rename(lawson1, text = lawson1)
Cleaning the lawson1 table by extracting creating a column for
initials and extracting the initials from the text. Then remove the
metadata (first two pages of general information about the interview) to
only have a table containing text, it is called lawson1t. With Lawson1t,
correct the first few row to include the right initials in the initials
column, then remove these initials from the text. Remove white spaces in
the text and all empty rows. Then merge the rows that have the same
consecutive initials to get the whole chunk of text one person was
saying in a single row, this dataset becomes Lawson1t_merged. Create the
group column to keep track of the oder of people talking in the
interview. Extract the time stamps from the text and put them in a time
column, then remove the time stamps from the text column.
lawson1 <- lawson1 %>%
#extract initials
mutate(initials = str_extract(text, pattern = "[A-Z]{1,3}\\:")) %>%
fill(initials, .direction = "down")
#remove the metadata and only look at interview
lawson1t <- lawson1[-c(1:60), ]
#correct first initials
lawson1t$initials[1:4] <- "RS:"
lawson1t$initials[5:7] <- "EL:"
#remove initials from text
lawson1t$text <- str_replace_all(lawson1t$text, "[A-Z]{1,3}:", "")
#remove white spaces
lawson1t$text <- gsub("\\s{2,}", "", lawson1t$text)
#remove empty rows
lawson1t <- lawson1t[!is.na(lawson1t$text), ]
#merging text
lawson1t <- lawson1t %>%
mutate(group = cumsum(initials != lag(initials, default = "")))
#merge consecutive rows within each group to have
lawson1t_merged <- lawson1t %>%
group_by(initials, group) %>%
summarise(text = paste(text, collapse = " ")) %>%
ungroup() %>%
arrange(group)
## `summarise()` has grouped output by 'initials'. You can override using the
## `.groups` argument.
#extract time stamps
lawson1t_merged <- lawson1t_merged %>%
mutate(time = str_extract_all(text, "\\[\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}\\.\\d\\]"))
time_unnested <- lawson1t_merged %>%
unnest(time)
#remove time stamps from text
lawson1t_merged$text <- gsub("\\[\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}\\.\\d\\]", "",lawson1t_merged$text)
Create a function to extract a keyword and extract the beginning of
the sentence, and end of the sentence containing that key word. This
creates the lawson1t_merged_keyword containing the column “before”,
“keyword_occurences”, “after” and “count_keyword”. The issue with this
current code is for the rows/groups where the keyword occurs more than
one time in different sentences. This code will only extract the
beginning and end of the sentence for one keyword per row –> this
should be fixed in the future.
# Choose a keyword
new_keyword <- "traps" # change keyword here
# Function to extract keyword and words before/after it
extract_keyword_and_context <- function(text, keyword) {
keyword_indices <- gregexpr(paste0("(?i)\\b", keyword, "\\b"), text)
num_occurrences <- sum(keyword_indices[[1]] != -1)
if (num_occurrences == 0) {
return(list(before = NULL, after = NULL, count = num_occurrences, keyword_occurrences = ""))
}
keyword_occurrences <- unlist(regmatches(text, keyword_indices))
before <- sub(".*[.!?] ", "", substr(text, 1, min(keyword_indices[[1]] + attr(keyword_indices[[1]], "match.length")) - 1))
before <- gsub(paste0("(?i)\\b", keyword, "\\b"), "", before)
after <- sub(paste0(".*(?i)\\b", keyword, "\\b(.*?[.!?])"), "\\1", text)
return(list(keyword = keyword, before = before, after = after, count = num_occurrences, keyword_occurrences = keyword_occurrences))
}
# Function to process data with a given keyword
process_data_with_keyword <- function(data, keyword) {
# Extract keyword and context for each row in the dataframe
processed_data <- data %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(keyword_context = list(extract_keyword_and_context(text, keyword)))
# Unnest the keyword_context column to get separate before and after columns
processed_data <- processed_data %>%
unnest_wider(c(keyword_context)) %>%
mutate(
before = coalesce(before, ""),
after = coalesce(after, ""),
count_keyword = coalesce(count, 0)
) %>%
select(initials, group, text, time, before, keyword_occurrences, after, count_keyword)
return(processed_data)
}
# Process data with the new keyword
lawson1t_merged_keyword <- process_data_with_keyword(lawson1t_merged, new_keyword)
#Pull part of text to verify accuracy/see whole entry
lawson1t_merged_keyword %>%
filter(group == 54) %>%
pull(text)
## [1] " Well, I don't know, it was quite interesting. It always quite interested me anyhow before I ever got into it, to make a living out of it. Years ago, seventy-five to a hundred traps was a big string of traps and now, the big fisherman, they run up to a thousand traps. Probably five-hundred, six-hundred’s just an average string. I used to run about five hundred or better, now I’m getting older, I only run about four-hundred. "
A list of location mentionned in Edwin Lawson’s first interview was
collected trough ChatGPT and is called locations. A list of all
locations mentioned was created as Delphine and Will were coding the 4
EL interviews, it therefore contains more locations and is called
locations_EL.
# List of locations from ChatGPT with EL interview 1 only
locations <- c("West Tremont", "home", "Seal Cove", "Ship Harbor", "Tremont",
"Rockland", "Maine", "Swan's Island", "Bass Harbor", "Blue Hill Bay",
"Hardwood Island", "Stonington", "Blue Hill", "Black Island", "Goose Cove", "England")
# List of locations compiled by us while coding all the EL interviews
locations_EL <- c("Swan's Island", "home", "Southwest Harbor", "Manset", "Worcester", "Massachusetts", "California", "Pasadena", "Florida", "Lake Worth", "Palm Beach", "Westward", "Cherryfield", "Canada", "Hancock", "Bangor", "Castine", "Ship Harbor", "West", "Boston", "Gloucester", "New York", "Black Island", "Mitchell's Cove", "Placentia", "Bass Harbor", "Blue Hill", "Blue Hill Bay", "Hardwood Island", "Stonington", "Seal Cove", "Mitchell’s Cove", "Goose Cove", "West Tremont", "Lynn", "Marblehead", "Maine", "Bass Harbor Head", "Bear Island", "Ship Island Ledges", "Ship Island", "bay", "Gulf", "Wilson", "Bernard", "Portland", "Rockland", "Mt. Desert Island/ Mount Desert Island", "Chester", "England", "Tremont", "Ellsworth", "Cranberry Island", "Mt. Desert Rock/ Mount Desert Rocks", "Duck Island", "Duck Cove", "Cape Cod", "Camden", "Norway", "Saugus", "Nova Scotia", "Atlantic", "Brooklin", "Corea", "Prospect Harbor", "Orono", "New Hampshire", "Hancock county", "Bar Harbor", "Northeast Harbor", "Vinalhaven", "Eastward", "Oak Point", "Long Ledge", "Platt's Point", "Somesville", "England")
A function is created to extract the locations from the the text
column of lawson1t_merged in relations to the locations of the list
location.The locations are extracted into a column called location.
#function to extract location
extract_location <- function(text)
{ extracted_location <- str_extract_all(text, paste(locations, collapse = "|"))
return(extracted_location)}
#link to lawson1t_merged
lawson1t_merged$location <- sapply(lawson1t_merged$text, extract_location)
#check how many picked out by chatGPT --> 21 rows with locations
lawson1t_merged %>%
count(location) %>%
summarize(sum = location)
## Warning: Returning more (or less) than 1 row per `summarise()` group was deprecated in
## dplyr 1.1.0.
## ℹ Please use `reframe()` instead.
## ℹ When switching from `summarise()` to `reframe()`, remember that `reframe()`
## always returns an ungrouped data frame and adjust accordingly.
## Call `lifecycle::last_lifecycle_warnings()` to see where this warning was
## generated.
## # A tibble: 21 × 1
## sum
## <named list>
## 1 <chr [3]>
## 2 <chr [2]>
## 3 <chr [0]>
## 4 <chr [2]>
## 5 <chr [1]>
## 6 <chr [2]>
## 7 <chr [1]>
## 8 <chr [3]>
## 9 <chr [1]>
## 10 <chr [2]>
## # ℹ 11 more rows
This is a function extracting the locations from the text in
reference to the locations_EL to make sure that ChatGPT did not miss any
locations from the girst interview when it was create the location list.
There are slight differences depending on considering West Tremont also
as West and Tremont on their own.
# #function to extract locations from compiled EL list
extract_locations_EL <- function(text)
{ extracted_locations_EL <- str_extract_all(text, paste(locations_EL, collapse = "|"))
return(extracted_locations_EL)}
# #link to lawson1t_merged
lawson1t_merged$location <- sapply(lawson1t_merged$text, extract_locations_EL)
#check how many picked out by chatGPT --> 21 rows with locations
lawson1t_merged %>%
count(location) %>%
summarize(sum = location)
## Warning: Returning more (or less) than 1 row per `summarise()` group was deprecated in
## dplyr 1.1.0.
## ℹ Please use `reframe()` instead.
## ℹ When switching from `summarise()` to `reframe()`, remember that `reframe()`
## always returns an ungrouped data frame and adjust accordingly.
## Call `lifecycle::last_lifecycle_warnings()` to see where this warning was
## generated.
## # A tibble: 27 × 1
## sum
## <named list>
## 1 <chr [4]>
## 2 <chr [2]>
## 3 <chr [0]>
## 4 <chr [2]>
## 5 <chr [1]>
## 6 <chr [5]>
## 7 <chr [2]>
## 8 <chr [1]>
## 9 <chr [5]>
## 10 <chr [1]>
## # ℹ 17 more rows
#this gives 5 more locations than the list from ChatGPT. It separated West Tremont into two like West and Tremont. These have been mentioned both together and as separate. The locations were still picked out wich means that ChatGPT was still accurate. However by only using ChatGPT we might also miss a few.
This was a trial of Location network trough the lawson1t_merged
dataset that was filtered for only the rows with locations extracted
based on the location list. This network does not work. It was left here
since it could potentially be modified and use the locations as the
center bubbles and have relevant words/text hovering around. This
visualization attempt could also be deleted.
#This one is not working (might want to use this template for locations and their keywords associated to it)
# Filter for the rows with locations
filtered_merged <- lawson1t_merged %>%
filter(location != "character(0)") %>%
unnest(location)
# Add unique identifiers to location names
filtered_merged$location <- paste0(filtered_merged$location, "_", filtered_merged$group)
# Create list of connection locations (within the same group)
connection_list_1 <- filtered_merged %>%
group_by(group) %>%
filter(n() > 1) %>%
mutate(from = lag(location), to = lead(location)) %>%
na.omit() %>%
select(from, to)
## Adding missing grouping variables: `group`
# Create a graph from the filtered data
network_location_1 <- graph_from_data_frame(connection_list_1, directed = TRUE)
# Get unique initials
initials <- unique(filtered_merged$initials)
# Choose colors
colors <- ifelse(grepl("^RS:", initials), "red", "blue")
# Plot network
plot(network_location_1, vertex.color = colors)
Here is a second try at a location network, and it also doesn’t
work. It was left here for someone to pick up or modify like mentioned
for the first location network graph, but it could also be deleted.
#This one is not working
# Filter for the rows with locations
filtered_merged <- lawson1t_merged %>%
filter(location != "character(0)") %>%
unnest(location)
# Add unique identifiers to location names
#filtered_merged$location <- paste0(filtered_merged$location, "_", filtered_merged$group)
# Create list of connection locations (within the same group)
connection_list_2 <- filtered_merged %>%
group_by(group, initials) %>%
filter(n() > 1) #%>%
# mutate(from = paste0(location, "_", initials), to = paste0(lead(location), "_", lead(initials))) %>%
# na.omit() %>%
# select(from, to)
# Create a graph from the filtered data
network_location_2 <- graph_from_data_frame(d = connection_list_2, directed = TRUE)
# # Get unique initials
# initials <- unique(filtered_merged$initials)
# Assign unique vertex names
# unique_names <- paste0(V(network_location)$name, "_", sequence(vcount(network_location)))
# V(network_location)$name <- unique_names
# Choose colors
colors <- ifelse(grepl("^RS:", initials), "red", "blue")
# Plot network with vertex color based on initials
plot(network_location_2, vertex.color = colors[V(network_location_2)$initials])
This chunck uses the more generic code above to create the functions
that could be included in the Shiny App. This is a “best guess” but it
has not yet been tried in the app and it might need some modifications
before it actually. It is all commented out for the same reasons as the
chunk above. Be careful because of the line in this chunk (and the one
above) are actual comments to express the different steps of the
code.
# create_location_connections <- function(cleaned_interview) {
# # Filter for the rows with locations only
# location_connections <- cleaned_interview %>%
# filter(!is.na(extracted_locations)) %>%
# unnest_tokens(extracted_locations) %>%
# group_by(group, initials) %>%
# filter(n() > 1) # Filter rows with more than one location
#
# # Create associations between locations
# location_connections <- location_connections %>%
# group_by(group) %>%
# summarize(combination = list(combn(extracted_locations, 2, simplify = FALSE))) %>%
# unnest(combination) %>%
# separate(combination, into = c("from", "to"), sep = ", ", convert = TRUE) %>%
# mutate(from = gsub("^c\\(|\\)$|\"|'", "", from),
# to = gsub("^c\\(|\\)$|\"|'", "", to))
#
# # Calculate the number of connections for each node (to display the size accordingly)
# node_connections <- location_connections %>%
# count(from, name = "connections") %>%
# bind_rows(location_connections %>% count(to, name = "connections")) %>%
# group_by(from) %>%
# summarize(max_connections = max(connections, na.rm = TRUE))
#
# # Merge node_degrees
# location_connections <- left_join(location_connections, node_connections, by = c("from" = "from"))
#
# # Combine the 'group' and '(from, to)' variables to create unique ids
# location_connections$unique_id <- interaction(location_connections$group, location_connections$from, location_connections$to)
#
# return(location_connections)
# }
#
# # Create the location connections dataframe using the cleaned_interview
# location_connections <- reactive({
# req(cleaned_interview())
# create_location_connections(cleaned_interview())
# })
#
# # Generate the location network visualization
# output$location_network <- renderPlot({
# location_connections_data <- location_connections()
#
# if (nrow(location_connections_data) > 0) {
# location_connections_data %>%
# ggraph(layout = "nicely") +
# geom_edge_link(aes(alpha = 2, color = unique_id),
# show.legend = TRUE,
# arrow = arrow(length = unit(1.5, "mm")),
# start_cap = circle(3, "mm"),
# end_cap = circle(3, "mm")) +
# geom_node_text(aes(label = from),
# size = 6) +
# scale_size_continuous(range = c(6, 12), guide = "legend") +
# scale_color_viridis_d() +
# theme_graph()
# } else {
# # If there are no location connections, display a message
# plot(1, 1, type = "n", xlab = "", ylab = "", xlim = c(0, 1), ylim = c(0, 1))
# text(0.5, 0.5, "No location connections found.", cex = 1.2)
# }
# })
# }
# location_connections <- create_location_connections("connection_list_2")
This is a list of gear that was extracted by ChatGPT from Edwin
Lawson’s first interview. This list is also what is currently in the
Shiny App. It is far from being comprehensive and some words might not
be appropriate, but we left it as it since we were using it for trials
and creating the App rather than actually using it to code for
interviews. It will need to be changed and made more comprehensive in
the future.
gear <- c("tape recorder", "battery", "sardine weir", "fishing lines", "lobster traps", "rowboat", "lobster smack", "lobster buyers", "lobster companies", "lobster boat", "lobster catcher", "outboard motor", "two and a half horsepower outboard motor", "wooden lobster traps", "softwood traps", "second-hand traps", "laths", "boughs", "bottoms", "frames", "nylon twine", "cotton twine", "manila twine", "polyethylene twine", "plastic buoys", "foam buoys", "styrofoam buoys", "wooden buoys", "cedar wood", "oak wood", "spruce wood", "pot warp", "toggle", "single-cylinder boat engine", "four-cylinder boat engine", "six-cylinder boat engine", "eight-cylinder boat engine", "diesel engine", "gasoline engine", "hundred and thirty-five horsepower gasoline engine", "eighty-horsepower diesel engine","seine net")
Here we create the lawson1t_merged_lower to more easily extract all
the grea from the text column. This was not done earlier since we needed
the Uppercase words to search and match the locations.
lawson1t_merged_lower <- lawson1t_merged %>%
mutate(text = tolower(text))
This is a function to extract the gear from the text column and put
it in a gear column (similar to locations)
#function to extract gear
extract_gear <- function(text)
{ extracted_gear <- str_extract_all(text, paste(gear, collapse = "|"))
return(extracted_gear)}
#link to lawson1t_merged_lower
lawson1t_merged_lower$gear <- sapply(lawson1t_merged_lower$text, extract_gear)
This is a list of species extracted by ChatGPT from the first EL
interview. Like for the gear and locations, it will need to be
enhanced.
species <- c("lobsters", "scallops", "lobster", "scallop", "sardine", "sardines")
This is the function that extracts the species from the text in
reference to the species list and put them in a column called species,
using the lawson1t_merged_lower dataset.
#function to extract species
extract_species <- function(text)
{ extracted_species <- str_extract_all(text, paste(species, collapse = "|"))
return(extracted_species)}
#link to lawson1t_merged_lower
lawson1t_merged_lower$species <- sapply(lawson1t_merged_lower$text, extract_species)
THis was a trial at text wrapping in RStudio for the table in order
to better see the text column. It is not working here, but ChatGPT says
that it will be more useful within the shiny App –> as a matter of
fact, using data.table in the Shiny App is helpful and allows for a more
user friendly data table that the user can also modify.
# Convert to data.table
setDT(lawson1t_merged_lower)
# Function to wrap the text and create a new data.table with individual wrapped lines
wrap_text_lines <- function(text, width) {
wrapped_lines <- strwrap(text, width = width)
data.table(Wrappedtext = unlist(wrapped_lines))
}
# Wrap the text in the "text" column and store the result in the new data.table
width <- 1000 # Adjust the width as needed
wrap_lawson1t_merged_lower <- lawson1t_merged_lower[, wrap_text_lines(text, width), by = group]
# Print the modified data.table with wrapped text
print(wrap_lawson1t_merged_lower)
## group
## 1: 1
## 2: 2
## 3: 3
## 4: 4
## 5: 5
## ---
## 290: 288
## 291: 289
## 292: 290
## 293: 291
## 294: 292
## Wrappedtext
## 1: his home in west tremont, maine. the date is october 13, 1972. okay, i will start by asking you where you were born.
## 2: edwin lawson: well, i was born right here in tremont, on seal cove, that's up the line here about a couple three miles.
## 3: how long did you live around here?
## 4: oh, [here the tape recorder failed to work on battery. the tape resumes again after i plug it in and use it on ac.]
## 5: it was the battery.
## ---
## 290: plug lobsters and bait pockets, like that.
## 291: what do you use for plugs?
## 292: for what?
## 293: what do you use for the plugs? wooden?
## 294: oh, i use wooden plugs. some of them use elastic bands and some of them use plastic plugs. elastic bands are really the best, because they have the little, like a pair of scissors, that open the bands, they put them on over the claws and the lobster can't open his claw. the other way you've got to stick that plug right down into where the joint in his claw. and after they do that, they car them up, to hold them up. [here the tape ran out. we continued to talk about lobster plugs for a while and then moves on to a more general conversation.] end of 10131972-lawson-edwin-interview-westtremont-mfc , reviewed by delphine demaisy 06/23/2023
This is a generic term frequency graph for the first Edwin Lawson
interview, created trough the lawson1_word dataset where the text column
was unnested to separate each word.
lawson1_word <- lawson1t %>%
unnest_tokens(word, text)
lawson1_word %>%
anti_join(get_stopwords(source = "smart")) %>%
count(word, sort = TRUE) %>%
slice_max(n, n = 20) %>%
ggplot(aes(n, fct_reorder(word, n))) +
geom_col()
## Joining with `by = join_by(word)`
This is a calculation of the term frequency values for EL1
lawson1_word <- lawson1t %>%
unnest_tokens(word, text)
lawson1_word <- lawson1_word %>%
anti_join(get_stopwords(source = "smart")) %>%
count(word, sort = TRUE)
## Joining with `by = join_by(word)`
word_document_freq_1 <- lawson1_word %>%
mutate(tf = n / sum(n))
print(word_document_freq_1)
## # A tibble: 818 × 3
## word n tf
## <chr> <int> <dbl>
## 1 traps 43 0.0185
## 2 00 39 0.0168
## 3 bay 28 0.0121
## 4 years 28 0.0121
## 5 boat 26 0.0112
## 6 time 25 0.0108
## 7 fish 24 0.0103
## 8 guess 24 0.0103
## 9 yeah 24 0.0103
## 10 lot 23 0.00990
## # ℹ 808 more rows
The word_list was created by asking ChapGPT for the words with the
higest frequency and that were the most relevant to the content of the
first Edwin Lawson Interview. We beleived it could give a more
meaningful summary of the content of the interview than the top words
from the word frequency. A wordcloud was then created using this
word_list.
#words provided by ChatGPT + added bay, summer, harbor, dollars from the word frequency plot above. (total of 37 words --> decide what amount of words would be best) I also added weiring and dragging (they are not of high frequency, but it is mentioned, which would be good to portray)
word_list <- c("lobster", "boat", "traps", "fishermen", "water", "lobstering", "oil", "clothes",
"motor", "work", "years", "fishing", "rowboat", "wharf", "season", "boats",
"diesel", "buoys", "accidents", "licence", "gasoline", "engine", "swim", "son",
"horsepower", "fishing", "heavy", "boots", "color", "land", "coast", "shore",
"family", "winter", "father", "summer", "bay", "harbor", "dollars", "weiring", "dragging")
words_freq_1 <- lawson1_word
words_freq_1 <- words_freq_1[words_freq_1$word %in% word_list, ]
color_palette <- brewer.pal(8, "Set2")
wordcloud(
words_freq_1$word,
words_freq_1$n,
colors = color_palette,
random.order = FALSE, # To keep the word order as per frequency
scale = c(5, 0.5),
max.words = 50,
)
Reading in the second Edwin Lawson interview (10201972) and creating
the lawson2_full_text dataset (like for EL1)
lawson2_full_text <- pdftools::pdf_text(pdf = "data/Lawson_Edwin_10201972.pdf")
Creating the lawson_2 tibble of text (like for EL1)
# convert text to string
lawson2_full_text <- toString(lawson2_full_text)
lawson2_full_text
## [1] "NORTHEAST ARCHIVES OF FOLKLORE AND ORAL HISTORY IN PARTNERSHIP\n WITH MAINE FOLKLIFE CENTER\n\n\n AN INTERVIEW WITH EDWIN LAWSON FOR THE “LIFE OF THE MAINE\n LOBSTERMAN” PROJECT\n\n\n INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY RITA SWIDROWSKI\n\n\n WEST TREMONT, MAINE OCTOBER 20, 1972\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT BY RITA SWIDROWSKI\n\n\n EDITED BY WILL DRAXER\n, Interviewee Name: Edwin Lawson\n\nProject/Collection Title: Life of the Maine Lobsterman\n\nInterviewer(s) Name(s) and Affiliation: Rita Swidrowski – Maine Folklife Center\n\nInterview Location: West Tremont, ME\n\nDate of Interview: 10-20-1972\n\nInterview Description: Mr. Edwin Lawson at 73 years old, is an active and successful\nlobster-fisherman. It is an occupation that he has been steadily working at for 49 years. For about\n35 years, until 15 years ago, he also dragged scallops every winter on his own boat. In this\ninterview he discusses the daily routine of a lobsterman, from waking up to selling off the lobster\ncatch. He also speaks on the differences in fishing and fishing culture along the Maine coast, his\nhistory and progression as a fisherman, and the gear used.\n\nKey Words: Maine, lobster, lobsterman, fishing, lobster fishing, bait, Tremont, routine, dealer,\ntraps, boats, meals.\n\nCollection Description: The bulk of the nineteen accessions (33 hours) in this collection consists\nof interviews by David Taylor conducted during the summer of 1974 focused on Maine lobster\nfishermen. Series NA0726, NA0727, and NA0747 - NA0750, and NA0777 have been added to\nthe collection since they are on the same topic and were done around the same time. Included in\nthe \"supplemental material\" is the contents of the MF037 collection folder: correspondence,\nclippings, articles, and surveys relating to the Life of the Maine Lobsterman Project. Transcripts\nby the Mapping Oceans Stories Project.\n\nCitation: Lawson, Edwin, Maine Folklife Center, October 20, 1972, by Rita Swidrowski, 25\npages, Maine Sound and Story. Online: Insert URL (Last Accessed: Insert Date).\nTranscribed By: Rita Swidrowski. Edited By: Will Draxler\n\n\nRS: Rita Swidrowski\nEL: Edwin Lawson\nML: Elsie Lawson (Edwin's wife)\n, START OF 101372-Lawson-Edwin-Interview-WestTremont-MFC\n\nSandy Ives: This is the beginning of the second interview. October 20, 1972. The following is a\ntape of Interview #2, between Rita Swidrowski and Edwin Lawson in his home in West Tremont,\nMaine. October 20,1972.\n\n[Before the tape began we had been talking about summer people on Mount Desert Island. Mr.\nLawson is telling me about the land he owns and that the summer people own in Goose Cove\nwhere he lives.]\n\n[00:02:40.10] [Start of Audio Part 3]\n\nRita Swidrowski: Really?\n\nEdwin Lawson: They [summer people] own all the shore property, practically.\n\nRS: They keep selling it for more and more money now?\n\nEL: I own quite a lot down here but I wouldn't sell it for – it would be no advantage and I want it\nfor myself. It's only about three or four pieces of land here on this cove, here, that belongs to\nnatives now. Shorefront – a lot of it belongs to summer people and some of them got a lot of it.\n\nRS: Yeah. Are they very friendly, summer people?\n\nEL: Oh, some of them don't want you on their land. They can get all over yours, though but they\ndon't like to have you on their land.\n\nRS: That is too bad, it should work both ways. [laughter]\n\nEL: Yes, I've got my land all posted down there, “no trespassing” [laughter] I just do it for my\nown protection, so people won't go down there. Three of us go fishing from here and we have\ntrap stuff down on the wharves and everything and they go down there and throw stuff around\nsometimes, the kids do.\n\nRS: Who is the third one that goes fishing down here?\n\nEL: My son and his son, my grandson.\n\nRS: That is the grandson that is about twenty? Is that the one?\n, EL: Yeah.\n\nRS: And then your son is building a wharf too?\n\nEL: Yeah, he's building it right alongside mine. We built this road down through here together.\n[referring to road to the right of the house across the street that goes right down to the shore]\n\nRS: What, all three of you?\n\nEL: Well, my [grand]son, no.\n\n[00:04:36.16]\n\nRS: Where do you row your boat? You told me last time that you have some row boats down\nhere on your shore front.\n\nEL: Yeah, we have our boat, the mooring, out in the harbor where we leave our big boats and we\nland down here, on this shore. And then we have to row out every morning though and back at\nnight.\n\nRS: Out to which harbor?\n\nEL: This one, right here, this is Goose Cove.\n\nRS: Goose Cove has its own harbor then?\n\nEL: Well, yeah, that's what we call harbor [laughter] we call it either one.\n\nRS: Then you just row out? I always think of a harbor as being like Southwest Harbor.\n\nEL: No. [Referring to the second phrase]\n\nRS: I wonder if you could describe a typical day of fishing when you go out, from the time you\nget up in the morning, what do you do?\n\nEL: I get my breakfast, of course. I put up my own dinner, lunch, go down to the shore, row off\nfor the boat, get under way, go out [and] start hauling traps. That's about all there is to it.\n\n[00:05:55.14]\n, RS: What time would you usually go?\n\nEL: Well, as soon as we can see. There's a law, they don't enforce it but you can't haul traps a half\nhour before sunrise or a half hour after sunset. No, that's the law but they don't enforce it unless\nsomebody makes a complaint. I've only known one complaint, that was quite a few years ago I\nguess somebody just had a grudge against somebody. They run so many traps you've got to get\nstarted early, that's the best part of the day in the morning. And in the summertime, of course you\nget quite a lot of daylight before sunrise.\n\nRS: Do you ever actually pull up your traps in the dark or do you wait until you can see?\n\nEL: Oh no, we have to wait until daylight of course, so we can see a lot of the buoys.\n\nRS: So you go out to your boat and then what do you have to do on your boat? What is the first\nthing you have to prepare, anything everyday on the boat?\n\nEL: Well, of course we have a lot of bait pockets; small mesh bags with drawstring. Then I\ngenerally have fifty or a hundred spare ones so I bait my pockets in the morning and part of them\nand that saves time, when I haul a trap I just take the old one out and put in another one all\nbaited, I don't lose time that way, it's quicker.\n\n[00:07:48.25]\n\nRS: Do you buy your bait everyday?\n\nEL: No, we bait about twice a week. Of course this time of year bait will keep for all the fall now\n[with] a little salt, but in the summer it spoils quick, about every two or three days we have to get\nbait.\n\nRS: Where do you get your bait?\n\nEL: We get it at the fish wharf where we sell our lobsters, it comes from the sardine factory, well\nsome of it comes from Southwest, some of it comes from Downeast, some of it comes clear\naway from Canada.\n\nRS: What type of fish do you use for your bait?\n\nEL: Herring, what they put for sardines, the part they don't use on the - and then they use a small\nred fish now, about eight, nine inches long. They seem to be pretty good this time of year, they\nstay in better, the sea fleas don't eat them so quick.\n, RS: The sea fleas?\n\nEL: Yeah, little bits of sea fleas, they get in the pockets and they eat more bait than lobsters do.\nLobsters don't eat much bait, lobsters or crabs, it's sea fleas what eats the bait. Sometimes, they'll\ncover the bag right up just so you can't see it when you haul trap out of water. Some of them's as\nbig as pinheads and some of them might be [a] sixteenth of an inch long or perhaps an eighth of\nan inch long.\n\n[00:09:33.10]\n\nRS: Where do you keep the bait bags on the boat?\n\nEL: We just have a tub to put them into.\n\nRS: Like a bucket?\n\nEL: Yeah, big tub.\n\nRS: Where do you sell your lobsters?\n\nEL: Down to Bass Harbor, Morris Rich, he buys for a man named Hook in Boston. A big dealer,\nwholesaler, and we sell to Morris, he's the agent here and then he sells them to Hook, he gets a\ncommission on them, just the same as we do.\n\nRS: What is the price right now, would you say?\n\nEL: It's a dollar right now, it's gone up, we got as high as a dollar forty cents this summer but it\nwent down, then they had that clam scare, that red tide and they went down to eighty cents. Now\nit's bad weather, the boats don't get out so much, they're going back up again now. And we get\nfive cents a pound for taking them down straight from here. It's about three miles down from this\nharbor to Bass Harbor, and then of course we save crabs too. We get crabs with our lobsters in\n[the traps], they pay seven cents a pound for crabs. I can get enough out of my crabs to more than\npay my expenses now.\n\nRS: To pay your expenses for fishing?\n\nL : Yeah, pay for my bait and the gasoline.\n\n[00:11:20.21]\n, RS: How long have you been selling to Rich?\n\nEL: Twenty-five, thirty years.\n\nRS: Does he have a lot of people around here he sells to?\n\nEL: Oh yes, he has a lot of boats in Bass Harbor, he has three – I have a son, grandson up here\nand there's two other boats goes out of here, they sell to on this other side of Bass Harbor. They\nsell to Radcliff, he's another lobster buyer. There's three buyers in Bass Harbor; there's a New\nYork man, there's Morris Rich and there's Radcliff. And they all have [the] same boats sell to\nthem everyday, they don't change around. A lot of the dealers get their material for them for the\ntraps and hardware, boat stuff and they kind of look out for the fishermen quite a lot.\n\n[00:12:33.25]\n\nRS: Is it a verbal agreement of who will sell to him – ?\n\nEL: Oh, no.\n\nRS: Sign up with him?\n\nEL: Oh, no, no, you can go anywhere you want to [chuckling] but a lot of them, they owe the\ndealers, so they have to sell to the dealers. But the ones that don't owe, they can go anywhere if\nthey want to. Some of them, once in a while do, but not very often. They all have their own boats\nand fish houses where we have bait down there, and that kind of holds the – anybody at the same\nplace, he's got a big wharf there and a lot of buildings and they're parted off, each fisherman has\nhis own bait shed where he keeps his bait and he can lock it up if he wants to. Sometimes, it's\nbetter if you do lock it up, I lost about a half a barrel of red fish this morning.\n\nRS: Did you really?\n\nEL: Somebody just helped themself, I guess.\n\nRS: Do you have any idea who?\n\nEL: Well, sometimes you have an idea but, you're not always right. As a general thing, they're a\ngood bunch of people. You find one, two bad ones in every crowd of people. Not really bad, a\nlittle stealing don't hurt nothing. [laughter] As long as you've got plenty [of] bait, why, I don't\nmind.\n, [00:14:28.00]\n\nRS: That happens I guess. Will they – ?\n\nEL: You're a lot better if you don't say anything [than] if you do, sometimes. [laughter]\n\nRS: You think so? Did they take anybody else's this morning?\n\nEL: Oh, they do, off and on, they take somebody's.\n\nRS: Yeah, what, do you think – ?\n\nEL: Not very much, don't amount to much. Only once in a while, we leave our lobsters all up\nhere in small crates [for] three or four days, before we take them to the market. And once in a\nwhile, there's somebody that goes off from here, off from the shore and takes a few lobsters out\nof our crates, but that don't happen very often, once in a while.\n\nRS: You think somebody from – ?\n\nEL: [They] just want some to eat, they'll take a dozen, half a dozen, or something like that. If\nyou've got a lot of lobsters, you'll never miss them, but if you happen to have a few. You can tell\n[by] the way the crates are tied up again, about always; if it's not a fisherman that takes them,\nthey don't have a regular knot, they just have any kind of a knot and sometimes they don't tie\nthem up at all but, general thing you can tell.\n\nRS: What kind of knots do you use, any special knot?\n\nEL: A square knot, about always, fishermen use it. And mostly anybody that don't tie – a lot of\npeople don't tie a square knot, they tie what they call a granny knot, it's just about backwards\nfrom a square knot.\n\nRS: But all the fishermen would use a square knot?\n\nEL: Generally yeah.\n\nRS: So in most cases, you find that if it is somebody, you are going to find the other kind of\nknot?\n\nEL: Yeah about always you do.\n, [00:16:26.17]\n\nRS: Would you do anything if you found out, who stole this morning?\n\nEL: No, I wouldn't do anything.\n\nRS: You just would not do anything?\n\nEL: No, no.\n\nRS: But some people around here would, some of the fishermen might?\n\nEL: No, I don't think so, they might say something to them, They wouldn't – that would be as far\nas it would go.\n\nS : Yeah.\n\n[Mrs. Lawson who is in the room comments that a home run was made on the world series game\non t.v. Mr. Lawso asks who it is.There is silence for about 5 seconds as we watch. Mr. Lawson\ncomments that it was the home team that did it.]\n\nRS: So you think in most cases they might not? How about last week, you were telling me in\nStonington, I have heard like, what is it, Cranberry?\n\nEL: Cranberry Island?\n\nRS: Around there, would it be different you think, would the fishermen mind more, if that\nhappened to them?\n\nEL: No, I don't think so, they wouldn't do anything about it. Not really worthwhile to make the\ntrouble over, it don't happen. If it happened all the time – often when its only just once in a while,\nno, general run of fishermen, they're all honest. Some of them's quite rough, but they're honest.\n[laughter]\n\nRS: What do you mean that they are rough?\n\nEL: Oh, just rough and ready.\n\nRS: Just in their ways?\n, EL: Yeah.\n\nRS: Do you think they ever scare summer people people in their roughness?\n\nEL: No, I don't know as they do.\n\nRS: Yeah.\n\n[00:18:18.24]\n\nEL: The only thing – when you lose anything like that, it's always in the night, you might\nmistrust somebody but you'd never know, really. You'd know in your own mind, but just as well\nnot say too much about it.\n\nRS: Last week, you told me that up around Stonington, they do not like the part time people and\nsummer people to mix in as much into the places where they are fishing. Is that right?\n\nEL: No, I don't think so, no, I don't think there's anybody that likes it. They don't say much about\nit, but not much you can do about it. It's a free country and if they can, if they're issued a license\nthey've got a right to fish. Sometimes, they might take it into their own hands and destroy their\ngear or something like that [and] you couldn't stop them.\n\nRS: What is the nearest that people will come to each other? Are traps set next to each other?\n\nEL: Just as near as they can, if there happens to be a bottom where there's lobsters, there'll be a\nlot of traps. We figure on them, just so they won't snarl up, but sometimes [with] the tide\nchanging, they'll snarl up quite a lot, tangle up.\n\nRS: Tangle up with one another?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\nRS: Really?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\nRS: What do you do then, if you find it tangled?\n, EL: All you can do, [laughter] clear them when you haul them. That's when some people will cut\nyours and let it go.\n\nRS: Just because it is easier to do?\n\nEL: Yeah, ot too many fishermen.\n\n[00:20:19.19]\n\nRS: Yeah, you said that you know the bottom around here, you must know it pretty well?\n\nEL: Yes, I know it quite well.\n\nRS: What is a good place to set a trap?\n\nEL: Well, you want a hard bottom, rocky bottom, there's a lot of mud bottom; all in the middle of\nthe bay, most of that's mud. Well, this time of year, lobsters go on the mud when they're going off\nfrom the shore but in the summertime, you can't catch a lobster on the mud. They're all right\nanywhere from two, three feet of water, they don't go out very far in the summer. When they're\nshedding, they'll come right in out to the shore, around two, three feet of water, they'll cover up\nin the rocks or hide. You never see one, but after they've shed, when it starts to get cold, cold\nweather will start to drive them off from shore, in deeper water where the water's warmer. I don't\nknow where they go in the winter, I don't think they go out of the bay, of course you'd get the\nsame kind of lobsters there, you can tell, there's a difference in the bay lobster and an outside\nlobster, you can tell by looking at it, general thing. Well after they go off, get so late here in the\nbay you can't catch them, I don't know if they bury up or they just don't trap.\n\n[00:22:01.20]\n\nRS: What is the difference between a bay and the outside? What do you mean when you're\ntalking about the outside?\n\nEL: Oh, it's the outside islands, on the outside islands right out into the ocean. You know, where\nthere's nothing between the outside islands and across to the other side of the ocean. [laughter]\n\nRS: So what would be the difference between an outside lobster and a bay lobster?\n\nEL: Well, there's really no difference but, you can tell, they look a little different. The shell's a\nlittle different, if you didn't know you'd never know the difference. Some of them look alike, but\n, there's lobsters [that] we get way up in the head of the bay, this way [gesturing]. They don't look\nlike an outside lobster, and you get the same kind every year in the same places.\n\nRS: There is something in the color?\n\nEL: So, they don't go out of the bay, we used to think they could go out of the bay in cold\nweather, and come back in the spring. Well, of course a lot of them do, but there's a lot of them\nstay right in the bay, they just hide, I guess.\n\nRS: Do you think it is something with the shell or is there a general size difference?\n\nEL: Well, general darker color, that's about the only way you can tell, a little darker color.\n\nRS: At what time on the boat do you have lunch? Do you eat on the boat?\n\nEL: Anytime.\n\nRS: Anytime you are hungry?\n\nEL: I generally have lunch at about nine o'clock if I can, I don't eat much breakfast anyhow.\nThen, sometimes I don't open my dinner pail for the rest of the day. If it comes right so I'm busy\nall the time, I don't get hungry, when I'm in the house I won't eat all the time.\n\n[00:23:57.23]\n\nRS: You do not seem to get as hungry out there though?\n\nEL: Oh sometimes, I'm a little hungry, but I never seem to have time to eat, there's a lot of people\nwho will stop to eat but I can't. If I'm going to run from one place to another, I'll eat in between,\nbut when I've got a lot of traps right along in a row I never stop to eat. Sometimes I don't open\nmy dinner pail until two o'clock [pm] and other times it's all cleaned out at ten o'clock [am].\n\nRS: What do you usually pack, big dinner?\n\nEL: No, I just buy it mostly, mostly sweet stuff anyway, donuts and cookies and cake, pie. This\nsummer I am not even taking a sandwich. I used to take sandwiches, I'd generally bring them\nhome. Sometimes, I get out inside 20 minutes, I get my (coffee?) and dinner pail brought out and\nready to go offshore, I don't lose much time.\n\nRS: Would you put all your oil skins on right here?\n, EL: Oh no, we keep them onboard the boat.\n\nRS: Keep them in the boat?\n\nEL: Yeah, right down in the cabin.\n\nRS: That would be the first thing when you get on the boat? Put them right on?\n\nEL: Well, that's for when we leave the moorings, head out, that's the first thing you'll do is put on\nyour oil clothes.\n\nRS: When you are out there, do you communicate? Do you have a radio on your boat?\n\n[00:25:43.23]\n\nEL: No, they do, a lot – I've had a ship-to-shore radio now for about four years and it's never\nbeen used yet. I get the news on it and sometimes when there's a ballgame on, if I have time, I\nturn it on for the radio part, but I never talk on it.\n\nRS: So it is just a ship-to-shore radio?\n\nEL: Yeah, talk with each other, sit in boats, you can call up the coast guard.\n\nRS: Do the men out here in the bay talk to one another from boat to boat?\n\nEL: Oh, yes, some of them talk all the time. Yeah, they like to talk, they talk a half an hour and\ndon't say anything, really. [laughter]\n\nRS: So everybody else has to listen to it?\n\nEL: They make me nervous, they're quite loud when they're on, everybody's got a different voice\nand the stuff don't interest me much.\n\nRS: What do they talk about?\n\nEL: They talk just the same as they would if they was to home, a lot of them. Some of them, if\nthey happened to find somebody's trap they'll tell them about it, they never tell if they're getting\nany lobsters, that's for sure. No, no, that's one thing that they never – I've never known of\nanybody ever telling anybody where there's any lobsters or fish or anything.\n, [00:27:43.01]\n\nRS: When did your kids go out with you, your two boys?\n\nEL: They used to go with me, they started in probably when they was, seven or eight years old,\nand they went with me until they was old enough to have a boat of their own. My oldest boy\nwent with me until he went in the Navy, when he come home from the Navy, he got his own\nboat.\n\nRS: Did you like having the kids out?\n\nEL: Oh, yeah, they were a big help, they'd bait pockets and plug lobsters and help you quite a lot.\nBut you can't- if anybody goes with you now they have to have a license, they're not allowed to\nhelp you. If I took anybody out, they wouldn't be allowed to do anything aboard the boat.\n\nRS: That is what I have heard, they are pretty strict on that, the warden?\n\nEL: Well, they would if they caught you, yes, of course there's not enough wardens around.\n[laughter] They do it, I've seen them do it, once in a while they get caught. I've noticed in the\npaper this summer, two or three kids got caught for – I think it's a twenty-five dollar fine.\n\nRS: Isn't it against the law, if you found a trap or a buoy on an island?\n\nEL: Yeah. You're not allowed to touch it.\n\nRS: Even if the numbers are worn off?\n\nEL: The what?\n\nRS: If the numbers are worn off, are you then allowed?\n\nEL: I suppose that would be alright, I imagine, whether you could prove it was yours or not.\n\n[00:29:36.09]\n\nRS: How do you judge when a trap is condemned? What makes it no good to you?\n\nEL: When the laths get worn off or rotten, when they get so you can't use it.\n, RS: What do you do with most of the condemned ones, you give them all to your sons?\n\nEL: Well, I used to give them to my grandson, he used to have it. Now, he has better traps and he\ndoesn't care too much about old traps or repairing them.\n\nRS: So what do you do now?\n\nEL: You repair an old trap, and it's awful tender, you hit it and laths will break and nails coming\nout and everything like that, the heads get bad. They're kind of a nuisance, we have too many of\nthem. I condemn pretty good traps now, there's fifty down on the wharf there now that, when I\nfirst started, I would call them good traps. [laughter] When you're running a big string of traps,\nyou want good traps so you won't have to be patching them up all the time. Well, sometimes we\npatch them up in the winter when we ain't doing much, but when you're fishing, it's just a\nnuisance, old traps.\n\n[00:31:13.07]\n\nRS: Then you make new ones too, don’t you?\n\nEL: I make fifty every winter now, I used to make a hundred but now I'm only making fifty. Just\nabout keep my string, what I condemn, what I lose; I lose quite a few. A lot of yachts in the bay\nin the summer, outboards, they cut the buoys off with their propellers and you lose a trap that\nway; I lose more that way than I lose myself.\n\nRS: What, in storms?\n\nEL: We don't lose any in storms, here in this bay, there's no undertow. This last storm, some of\nthe boats down in Bass Harbor there lost fifty, sixty traps.\n\nRS: When was that, just recently?\n\nEL: About two weeks ago, southwest wind is what staves up the traps, makes an undertow on\nthat out shore and it rolls the traps right over and over and tears them all to pieces. Sometimes it\nwill take fifteen, twenty traps and snarl them all up in a bunch, and they can't unclear them.\n\nRS: What is the average life of a trap, would you say, before it starts rotting?\n\nEL: About three years, I still think about three years or so. They do use them longer sometimes,\nbut after three years they start to show quite a lot of wear and tear.\n, RS: When you make your traps now, do you buy your trap stuff from the dealer?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\n[00:33:07.09]\n\nRS: What exactly would you buy, what are the parts of it that you would buy?\n\nEL: Well, you buy the bottom, the sills –\n\nRS: The sill comes ready made?\n\nEL: – and the cross pieces. They're already sawed out and bored, the holes are bored to put them\ntogether. And then there are three bows to a trap, They're all hardwood.\n\nRS: They are bored?\n\nEL: Yes, they're all bored, the holes are all bored in them and then the cross pieces are all turned\ndown so that they fit right into the holes; all you've got to do is put them right together.\n\nRS: And then you nail them?\n\nEL: Yeah, nail them, so they won't come apart, of course.\n\nRS: And then you knit your heads.\n\nEL: I knit my own heads, yes.\n\nRS: Do most people knit their own heads?\n\nEL: No, there's some of them but they buy a lot, have people knit them for them. They used to\ncharge three cents a head to knit, now they charge about fifteen. Some of these knitters are\nwomen, they make pretty good money, just knitting heads.\n\nRS: I would imagine so.\n\nEL: It's good, fast knitters.\n\nRS: How do you knit a head? Do you just use your hands or you have a tool?\n, EL: Well, you have a wooden – we call it a needle, and we fill it up with enough twine on it to\nknit the whole head, so you don't have to stop and tie a knot in it.\n\n[00:34:41.14]\n\n[Interrupted by TV, off topic discussion follows]\n\nRS: Who taught you to knit a head?\n\n[00:36:44.18]\n\nEL: I think my brother did, I used to hire most of my heads because I couldn't knit fast enough. I\ndidn't think I could, now I can't knit very fast but I have a lot of time to knit them.\n\nRS: So you did not knit your own heads at first?\n\nEL: Not at first, I didn't.\n\nRS: That was when you were around seventeen, eighteen?\n\nEL: Yeah, around that time. When I was first married I didn't knit them.\n\nRS: Did you make the rest of the traps?\n\nEL: Yeah I always made my own traps, but we used to have to go into the woods and get the\nmaterial to make the sills and cross pieces. We used tree branches for bows, the big tree\nbranches, spruce trees, that was quite slow work.\n\nRS: Were you right here then? [Pointing to the area across the street that goes down to Mr.\nLawson's shore.]\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\nRS: Where did you go, right down in there?\n\nEL: Well, we [went] anywhere in the woods where we could find the stuff. People didn't care\nthen, I don't know if they would now or not, [chuckling] probably, summer people, they might\nnot like it. It didn't hurt the trees any, we only took the big branches for the bows and the little\ntrees that were just three, four inches around for sills. And then they had to be all peeled and\n, made down and bored, and it took quite a lot of time. A good winter's work to make fifty traps,\nnow you can make three or four hundred if you wanted to, same length of time.\n\n[00:38:46.11]\n\nRS: How do you bend the bows, are they already curved?\n\nEL: Oh, they're already curved, they steam them, they're already steamed on a tray, on a mold,\nand they put down over a rack that they come on when we get them. They put right down over it\nand they're perfect when they come on these racks.\n\nRS: They do that now at the mill?\n\nEL: Yeah, they do it right in the mill.\n\nRS: How about when you got used to cut them from the woods?\n\nEL: We used to have to just bend them, put them in at the same- when we bend them just as fast\nas we bend them, and put them in.\n\nRS: I see, so did you flatten the branches, peel them or straighten them?\n\nEL: No, no, sometimes you'd have to take off a little, but not too much. When they're green,\nthey'll bend.\n\nRS: How many years did you do that for, going into the woods to get your stuff?\n\nEL: I wouldn't know, probably first ten years, anyhow, that I went.\n\nRS: What was the average number of traps that you hauled at that time, in those ten years?\n\n[00:40:13.13]\n\nEL: Of course, we didn't have the power hoisters and we didn't have four-cycle engines then. We\nhad just single cylinder and brake engine; you stop your engine everytime you haul a trap.\n\nRS: Why did you have to stop it?\n\nEL: We had to stop it, it's no transmission, no clutch on it, it was straight drive, right through. Of\ncourse, now you have the reverse gear, just like you do in a car.\n, RS: Was that when you had the twenty-two foot boat?\n\nEL: Yes, mostly, years ago, it's been a long while since I had any two cycle engines. They were\njust one cylinder, two cycle engines, they [had] about ten horse power. It was anywhere from five\nto ten horsepower, they was reliable but they was awful, quite noisy. They'd go anytime, you\ndidn't have to keep them dry.\n\nRS: Have you named your boats, the boats you have owned? They all have names?\n\nEL: I know this one is – I never got to put the name on it, the Elsie L. When you have a\ntelephone you have to have a boat name, to call and then your call number.\n\nRS: Where did you get your boats built? Different places?\n\nEL: No, no, I've only had one built, this one I've got now. It's about eleven years old. I had her\nbuilt down here, to Duck Cove, that's a boat shop about about a mile down the road.\n\n[00:42:17.13]\n\nRS: How big?\n\nEL: It's a place where they haul boats out, they haul yachts and store them for the winter. They\nhaul fish boats out, repair them. I haul my boat out there every winter, leave until about the first\nof May; I have a big tarpaulin I put over.\n\nRS: What do you have to do to her the first of May, when you start?\n\nEL: Well, we have to scrape and paint you know, and overhaul your engines and your machinery,\nwhatever there is to do. Some of them will leave them afloat all winter. Down [in] Bass Harbor\nthey can, but up here you, on account of the ice, you couldn't. This all freezes over lots of times,\nand then the ice comes in out of the bay and it freezes on one side of the harbor and takes boats\nback and forth. They used to leave them off here, years ago when they was scalloping, there was\na big fleet off here but when it would freeze over you'd have to get out and go to Bass Harbor\nand wait until the ice went out. The ice is awful powerful stuff, it all froze over and the winds\nchange, and it [would] start to go out, could take a whole fleet of boats right out of the bay.\n\nRS: When does the ice start?\n\n[00:43:56.00]\n, EL: It would start, on a Nor'easter, [over here] Northeast wind or an Easterly. It would freeze\nover, a Northwest wind when heavy cold and it keeps freezing in. It can't get out on a Northwest\nwind, that just backs right off and freezes right off from the shore.\n\nRS: Do you ever think of painting your boat blue?\n\nEL: Blue? Yeah, not me. [laughter] There's quite a few blue boats. My cousin's boy down at Bass\nHarbor's got a blue boat, I think there's three down there, kind of a bright blue. They paint them\nred, yellow, green, black, mostly white though, about all white with a buff top kind of thing.\n\nRS: Is buff like a brown you mean?\n\nEL: Kind of a brown.\n\nRS: Does anybody have a reason why they do not like blue?\n\nEL: Well, Jonah, they say it's a Jonah color; you never catch any fish if you paint your boat blue,\nI believe that's – I don't believe in signs, it don't bother me.\n\nRS: I have heard green, too.\n\nEL: I don't [know] green.\n\nRS: Have you seen many Canadian boats around here?\n\nEL: Well they use a lot of Canadian boats here, Nova Scotia boats, they use them up here for-\nthey're cheaper. They're made cheap too, they're not as good as Maine boats. They don't last too\nlong and a lot of trouble with them, and they age faster, they get old.\n\n[00:45:52.16]\n\nRS: Are there any special places on the Maine coast that you know of that are good places to get\na boat? Good quality boats?\n\nEL: Down East, they have good boats, over here in Southwest Harbor they have good boats.\nThey build good boats there but, Prospect Harbor and down Corea, all, there's a number of them\nboat shops down there, there's one in Stonington, and there's one or two, one up [in] Blue Hill\nand I think there's one in Brooklin. Boat shop, I think they build boats, but they're building a lot\nof fiberglass boats now.\n, RS: Do they seem as good?\n\nEL: I guess, no maintenance on a fiberglass boat, you know, after they get old but I don't know\nthat. They haven't been around long enough to know what they'll be like after they get old.\n\nRS: You said you had the first outboard around here?\n\nEL: Yeah, I had the first outboard.\n\nRS: How did you happen to want to get one?\n\n[00:47:14.06]\n\nEL: I was helping my father then over around – we had some weirs over on the island, this was\nBlack Island, over across the bay here, we had weirs there, fish weirs. We used to camp over\nthere in the summer, about every weekend I used to go down to Atlantic, that's down to Swan's\nIsland, a little town, Atlantic town, stay over the weekend. It's only about a mile or two, I used to\nhave that outboard to go down and come back. I generally come back Monday morning, that's\nbefore I was married, when I was probably seventeen, eighteen, something like that.\n\nRS: So a lot of the other people did not have them yet?\n\nEL: No, it's quite a while before they got to going.\n\nRS: How did you learn, your father never caught lobsters?\n\nEL: No, he never went lobstering, he used to go drag scallops in the winter. When he was\nyounger, he used to go trawling, catch fish same as – haddock and cod and hake.\n\nRS: Why didn't you stick with that and instead went to lobsters?\n\nEL: That kind of went out, there's nobody around here that does that now.\n\nRS: How about when you were young?\n\nEL: I used to go trawling quite a bit, in between lobstering. In the summer, there wasn't much\nlobstering, I used to go trawling in the summer. A few traps, and I didn't go out in bad weather,\nused to haul my traps. There wasn't much money going then, old days. [If] you made a living you\nwas lucky.\n, [00:49:15.12]\n\nRS: When did the weirs start fading out?\n\nEL: Quite a few years ago.\n\nRS: Do you remember about what year?\n\nEL: It's been thirty years since there's been anything in weirs. It's all my wife's father done, he\nhad weirs. There used to be good money in it years ago, but the seiners come in, that seine, and\nthey've ruined the whole thing now, there's very few fish that comes into the bay. What fish they\nget now, the sardine factories, mostly come from Canada. They fish them hard there but still the\nfish seem to come. They get them just the same but not on the Maine coast.\n\nRS: What were the weirs, last time you described them, but could you describe it again? I\nunderstand more now, it was a net and a stake right?\n\nEL: It was a long spile, you call them, and they have a spile driver and they drive them in off\nfrom the shore, just so far off from the shore. They put out a long leader and then they have this\nround on the outside of it, then they put the net in it. They put brush on the leader to turn the fish\noff. The fish go around the shore and hit that brush, mostly small birch trees and they'll go right\noff into this pocket. There's a mouth in it and it's made so that it goes in and the fish go in there\nand then they keep circling around instead of coming out.\n\n[00:51:19.13]\n\nRS: Do they keep them for a few days? Before they pull it?\n\nEL: Yes, general thing, sometimes they can sell them everyday but they have to shut them up\nabout one day.\n\n[A diagram is sketched out]\n\nRS: Yeah, that's good, I was going to ask for a picture. What would that be? [referring to the\nsketch]\n\nEL: Yeah, this leader, this goes off from the shore and this is all what we call brushed in. There's\nan opening right here.\n, RS: There is what, an opening right here?\n\nEL: The fish comes around from these sides, see, and then they hit this and they will go work in\nhere. That's what they call a heart, this is the outside part and this in here is where the net is, on\nthis part, there's two parts. And then, if you want to keep them in there, there's a gate, you just\nput a gate down here, a net for a gate.\n\n[00:52:15.01] [End of Audio Part 3]\n\n[Start of Audio Part 4] [00:00:17.12]\n\nRS: So this part in the middle, here, that is all open?\n\nEL: Yeah, that's all open, this is what they call a heart, and this is a pocket out here. They go into\nthis and the fish will circle it around and round this, then after a while, they'll find a way right\nout into this, out into this part with the twine on it. And then they shut them up, put a gate right\nacross there, then they can pull that twine right up. There's rails around here and they can pull,\nthey go around that and pull that twine right up and, that's the way they take them out. The\nsardine boat comes right in and lays right along side of this pocket, and they have a derrick with\na big net on it, and they dip them right into that part, they haul them up. Nowadays they pump\nthem instead of bailing them; hey have a big pump and when they pump them into these sardine\nboats, there's a big screen they pump them onto and they run into the hole in the boat, the fish\nhole. These scales go down through into baskets and the scales are worth really more than the\nherring, they use them to make artificial pearls, synthetic pearls.\n\nRS: Do they still do that now?\n\nEL: I think so, yeah.\n\nRS: Did your father make his own weirs?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\n[00:02:17.15]\n\nRS: That is interesting.\n\nEL: A lot of work to it; you've got to work with the tide, when it's slow water you can't do much\non the highwater. When you start, you have to go in the woods and get all that material. Costs a\n, fortune now to build a weir, used to build up around seven hundred dollars, everything. Now, it\nprobably costs three thousand or better.\n\nRS: Did you ever build one yourself?\n\nEL: My brother and I had three weirs, two weirs one summer.\n\nRS: That you built yourself?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\nRS: When was that?\n\nEL: About 1923, 1924, something like that.\n\nRS: That was before you really got into lobster fishing?\n\nEL: Oh, yeah, I went lobstering a little, few traps.\n\nRS: So your brother taught you a lot about fishing in general?\n\nEL: Yes, a lot.\n\nRS: He just showed you the different things and put you to work?\n\n[00:03:47.13]\n\nEL: I never worked with him too much, but he used to go vessel fishing out of Gloucester and\nPortland; trawling and sword-fishing when he was younger. Then he come home, he worked with\nfather for quite a while in the weirs and then he went into this dragging fish, that come into.\nThat's about the time that started, we had two or three different draggers. He was a good\nfisherman, he was one of the first around here to start dragging.\n\nRS: That was around 1923 or later?\n\nEL: From there on, yeah.\n\nRS: But you just slowly got more and more traps yourself.\n\nEL: Yes.\n, RS: Lobster-catching?\n\nEL: I used to go trawling quite a lot in the summer, I didn't have too many traps when I was first\nmarried. First of November, I'd get ready to go scalloping, dragging scallops though, there was\nmore money in that than there was in lobstering then. I had two scallop boats, draggers. I wore\nthem out and I quit, it got so there wasn't too much in it. But now, last few years, the scallops has\npicked up again and the price is big. I think the scallops are going to start at a dollar and eighty\ncents a pound, now, this year. They start first of November, I've caught scallops for eighteen\ncents a pound. [chuckles] There wasn't much money in that, you go out and clear seven or eight\ndollars you, you was lucky, ten dollars; gasoline was almost as high as it is now.\n\n[00:06:05.19]\n\nRS: That must have been hard. How about the price of lobster? What was it in 1920?\n\nEL: About twenty-five cents; twenty, twenty-five.\n\nRS: Did fishermen ever go on strikes or anything? I heard of one strike.\n\nEL: Well, they had – you could call it a strike, some of them stopped, some of them didn't; made\nquite a lot of trouble. Some people wanted to go, they didn't think it would make any difference\non the price and I never stopped, I kept right on going. Nobody ever bothered me, here was some\nof them, they'd go aboard the boats and take part of their engines off and throw them overboard\nor something like that and something that didn't amount to too much.\n\nRS: You mean the strikers did that?\n\nEL: Yeah, some of them thought that it was going to make the price higher, but it didn't make\nany difference when the lobster started. Wanted to go up when they wanted to put them up; it\nwas the supply and demand.\n\nRS: Where was it, all along the Maine coast?\n\nEL: Yeah.\n\nRS: When was that?\n\nEL: Oh, must have been twenty years ago.\n, RS: What price did they want?\n\nEL: We was getting thirty-five cents and they dropped them to thirty cents and some of them\nwent to a quarter, and they wanted a higher price; they couldn't go for less than thirty-five cents a\npound.\n\n[00:08:05.11]\n\nRS: How did Mr. Rich react, that you sell your lobsters to?\n\nEL: Yeah, I sell them.\n\nRS: Were you selling them to him at that time?\n\nEL: I sold them to his father before [him]. His father sold out and went over to Southwest Harbor\nto buy and he let his son run this place down here. His father did buy over to Southwest, he died\nabout five, six years ago.\n\nRS: Do you know him very well, personally?\n\nEL: Yes, he's a nice man, he's accommodating; anything you want, he'll get it for you.\n\nRS: How many people does he work with?\n\nEL: He runs practically all himself, he runs a crab factory too; he picks out crabs and he has help,\nsometimes he has two or three men there, off and on, not steady. Now I think he has mostly boys,\nweekends and nights, high school boys help him, hard to get anybody.\n\n[sounds of grandson David age 9 and Mrs. Lawson and her daughter Jeanette]\n\nRS: I heard that a lot of fishermen have their own, special way of fastening their warp to the\ntrap?\n\n[00:09:58.28]\n\nEL: Well, some are different, most of them about the same. Yes, they have different ways of\ntying the warps together the lines, and tying it onto their buoys. Practically all the same way, but\nnot too much difference.\n\nRS: How many traps do you have to a warp?\n, EL: In deep water I have two, some of these two around the shore, but I don't- kind of a nuisance\nto me. When you get tangled up with people, why, you get more snarl that way than you would if\nyou had single ones.\n\nRS: When you haul up your traps where do you put your lobsters on the boat?\n\nEL: I generally put them into a pail or something until I get a chance to plug them, put the plugs\nin the claws, and then I put them in – We have square crates that will hold about fifty pounds\nand, with doors on, we put them in that and that's what we keep them in, put them overboard at\nnight when we come in.\n\n[00:11:21.2] [End of Audio Part 4] & [End of Tape 726.2]\n[00:00:37.0] [Start of Audio Part 5] & [Start of Tape 726.3]\n\nEL: The boats going out of Bass Harbor, they sell every night. They don't car them up, what we\ncall carring. They sell every night so they don't have them on hand.\n\nRS: How long do you car them for?\n\nEL: Oh, about three days generally, three to four days.\n\nRS: If you had a big rainstorm would the fresh water affect them at all?\n\nEL: Well, if it's awful heavy it will sometimes, I don't know as [if] I ever lost a lobster that way.\nThey will sometimes lose them, especially where there's a brook [that] runs out, and near.\n\nRS: Do you leave them right down here? [Referring to his wharf in Goose Cove]\n\nL; Yeah, off where I keep my boat, over on the other side of the cove.\n\n[00:01:32.0]\n\nEND OF 10201972-Lawson-Edwin-Interview-WestTremont-MFC\n\nReviewed by Will Draxler 06/23/2023\n"
# convert text to character lines
lawson2 <- read_lines(lawson2_full_text)
lawson2 <- tibble(lawson2)
lawson2 <- rename(lawson2, text = lawson2)
Cleaning table for EL2, like done previously for EL1
lawson2 <- lawson2 %>%
mutate(initials = str_extract(text, pattern = "[A-Z]{1,3}\\:")) %>%
fill(initials, .direction = "down")
#remove the metadata and only look at interview
lawson2t <- lawson2[-c(1:57), ]
#correct first initials
lawson2t$initials[1:9] <- "ML:"
lawson2t$initials[10:11] <- "RS:"
lawson2t$initials[12:13] <- "EL:"
#remove full names
lawson2t$text[10] <- gsub("Rita Swidrowski:", "", lawson2t$text[10])
lawson2t$text[12] <- gsub("Edwin Lawson:", "", lawson2t$text[12])
#remove initials from text
lawson2t$text <- str_replace_all(lawson2t$text, "[A-Z]{1,3}:", "")
#remove white spaces
lawson2t$text <- gsub("\\s{2,}", "", lawson2t$text)
#remove empty rows
lawson2t <- lawson2t[!is.na(lawson2t$text), ]
#merging text
lawson2t <- lawson2t %>%
mutate(group = cumsum(initials != lag(initials, default = "")))
#merge consecutive rows within each group to have
lawson2t_merged <- lawson2t %>%
group_by(initials, group) %>%
summarise(text = paste(text, collapse = " ")) %>%
ungroup() %>%
arrange(group)
## `summarise()` has grouped output by 'initials'. You can override using the
## `.groups` argument.
#extract time stamps
lawson2t_merged <- lawson2t_merged %>%
mutate(time = str_extract_all(text, "\\[\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}\\.\\d{2}\\]"))
time_unnested <- lawson2t_merged %>%
unnest(time)
#remove time stamps from text
lawson2t_merged$text <- gsub("\\[\\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2}\\.\\d{2}\\]", "",lawson2t_merged$text)
Term Frequency calculation for the EL2
lawson2_word <- lawson2t %>%
unnest_tokens(word, text)
lawson2_word <- lawson2_word %>%
anti_join(get_stopwords(source = "smart")) %>%
count(word, sort = TRUE)
## Joining with `by = join_by(word)`
word_document_freq_2 <- lawson2_word %>%
mutate(tf = n / sum(n))
print(word_document_freq_2)
## # A tibble: 837 × 3
## word n tf
## <chr> <int> <dbl>
## 1 yeah 43 0.0186
## 2 00 40 0.0173
## 3 lot 40 0.0173
## 4 boat 34 0.0147
## 5 traps 32 0.0138
## 6 boats 31 0.0134
## 7 put 28 0.0121
## 8 people 26 0.0112
## 9 time 26 0.0112
## 10 fish 22 0.00952
## # ℹ 827 more rows
TF-IDF between EL1 and EL2. Here we seen that more stop words need
to be excluded to get more relevant results.
#do we perhaps also want to create a running list of our own stop_words to add so that we can remove them and they won't show up here (eg: that's, there's, they're, can't)
lawson1t <- lawson1t %>%
mutate(interview = "EL1")
lawson2t <- lawson2t %>%
mutate(interview = "EL2")
EL_interviews <- bind_rows(lawson1t, lawson2t)
interviews_word <- EL_interviews %>%
unnest_tokens(word, text) %>%
anti_join(get_stopwords(source = "smart")) %>%
count(interview, word, sort = TRUE)
## Joining with `by = join_by(word)`
interviews_tf_idf <- interviews_word %>%
bind_tf_idf(word, interview, n)
interviews_tf_idf %>%
arrange(-tf_idf)
## # A tibble: 1,655 × 6
## interview word n tf idf tf_idf
## <chr> <chr> <int> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 EL2 eat 11 0.00476 0.693 0.00330
## 2 EL2 knot 10 0.00433 0.693 0.00300
## 3 EL1 that’s 10 0.00430 0.693 0.00298
## 4 EL1 there’s 9 0.00387 0.693 0.00269
## 5 EL1 business 8 0.00344 0.693 0.00239
## 6 EL2 find 7 0.00303 0.693 0.00210
## 7 EL2 generally 7 0.00303 0.693 0.00210
## 8 EL2 price 7 0.00303 0.693 0.00210
## 9 EL1 can’t 7 0.00301 0.693 0.00209
## 10 EL1 colors 7 0.00301 0.693 0.00209
## # ℹ 1,645 more rows
Word Frequency Plot TF-IDF (EL1 and EL2)
interviews_tf_idf %>%
group_by(interview) %>%
slice_max(tf_idf, n = 20) %>%
ggplot(aes(tf_idf, fct_reorder(word, tf_idf), fill = interview)) +
geom_col(show.legend = FALSE) +
facet_wrap(~interview, scales = "free")
WordCloud visualization based on TF-IDF (EL1 and EL2)
wordcloud(
words = interviews_tf_idf$word,
freq = interviews_tf_idf$tf_idf,
scale = c(5, 0.5),
colors = brewer.pal(length(unique(interviews_tf_idf$interview)), "Set2"),
max.words = 40,
random.order = FALSE
)
## Warning in brewer.pal(length(unique(interviews_tf_idf$interview)), "Set2"): minimal value for n is 3, returning requested palette with 3 different levels
legend("topright", legend = unique(interviews_tf_idf$interview), fill = colors)
#Warning: minimal value for n is 3, returning requested palette with 3 different levels
